Not enough primary partitions in Compaq CQ-62-228dx (HP)

[nerdful1]

No primary partitions available for PCLinuxoOS.

This Compaq/HP CQ62-228DX  was restored to out-of box condition and decrapified for use after replacing the OEM faulty hard drive.

The recovery disk set, ordered from HP,  containing the full drive image and apps dvds were used to create the new hard drive partition,s recovery sectors, and W7.

The replacement drive is 250GB, compared to the original 160GB, so I wanted to put PCLinuxOS2011.6 on it.

I de-crapified the W7 install, did all its 80 or so important updates, 30 something optional updates, and all looked ripe for the PCLinuxOS install.

I used the W7 drive shrink function, and reduced the drive substantially, leaving around 160GB unallocated.

Now, when I try to use the unallocated space for PCLinuxOS, it seems i have run out of primary partitions. The desktop installer on the live cd complains, as does trying Gparted.

I want to leave the recovery and HP utility functional.

The partitions are scattered around the drive:
A small 200MB or so partition, then W7, the now unallocated part, the HP recovery image, and another HP part.

The first seems to be for booting, because when deleted the machine no longer boots.
The others are tied in somehow with the BIOS and F11 key.

So does one make extended partitions to install 2011? If windows dies, will 2011 still run from a loader?
Thanks

Edit: I went through the windows 7 boot recovery commands in the windows console and it boots. That 200 MB first partition now says unallocated, don't know what that part was for.

I just imaged the W7 decrappified partition, and may just blow away all the HP stuff and just have W7 part, 2011kde, and a windows formatted volume to allow W7 images for recovery.

The recovery disks are available anyway if the owner wants it back in "eeww out of the box" condition in the future..

[bennachie]

The second HP partition MAY be intended to hold a piece of software that is supposed to accelerate the boot process. HP are the crapware champions of the laptop world. The idea never seemed to work for me anyway, when I got a Compaq laptop, and Windows 7 is not nearly as bad as Vista in terms of the boot process. You might have to adjust the BIOS settings (can't really remember, it's all a while back), but otherwise that partition should be a top candidate for demolition. Deleting it would allow you to make a new extended partition in the space you've cleared, and to install as many Linux partitions as you want therein.

[Just17]

By the sound of things you have a very 'untidy' partition set up.

I would advise doing whatever is necessary to clean that up ......  preferably by deleting the partitions and recreating only those that are required.

Yes you need one primary partition created as an Extended type, so that you can create logical partitions within it.

It will be a bit of work - backing up and replacing the contents of some partitions -, but the partitioning scheme afterwards should be correct.

regards.

[nerdful1]

Thanks guys,

I wanted to leave it in restorable condition, being in warranty for now, but also for future reference.

I decided to blow away everything and make my own parts for now, since I paid for and receriverd recovery disks that will do the restore job.

What I learned, besides only needing to sacrifice one part as above posts, is that the recovery disks will hog the whole drive:

I had it dual booting W7 and 2011 test while awaiting the disks, with the double size hard drive partitioned accordingly.

What was unexpected is that I thought the recovery disks would only see the "c" partition, and I would use the rest for 2011. It hogged the entire drive...

Anyway, it took almost a year, but Linux drivers and apps finally caught up with this notebook, internal wifi, sound buttons, working, etc.

Thanks again.

[menotu]

Anyway, it took almost a year, but Linux drivers and apps finally caught up with this notebook, internal wifi, sound buttons, working, etc.

This seems to suggest that the wifi has been running on Linux for sometime (going on kernel version)

http://kmuto.jp/debian/hcl/Compaq/presario+CQ62-228DX

[nerdful1]

There was no solution at the time and the owner was traveling (with my loaned wifi dongle) till now.

Now if the touchpad can be fixed, she won't need a mouse dongle. (A recent post).

[T6]

sorry to ask, why restore it to factory defaults? why not just install win 7 clean and add drivers?

about the recovery partitions, you can wipe them, i don't like those

i had problems with one of those restoring a windows install but it wiped documents and settings folder, the owner almost cried when he called me a week later and 50 gbs of new content copied over the old deleted one

new recovery partitions ask first but still i hate them and they waste 20 gbs on just that

i have seen some of those partitions holding viruses

[nerdful1]

Why?
What if asked to
'put it back the way it was".

One might be concerned about taking a brandy new machine out of the box and putting some "linux thing" on it.

Fortunately, I was able to demonstrate that the drive had a mechanical failure, and not caused by anything i did.

In any other case, I agree completely with you.

[T6]

"put it back the way it was"

that is a good argument...