error partition table full

[loudog]

   well i got a new laptop and lo and behold when i went to install it gave me the partition table full error. so this is the chain of events that brought me to the forum: 1, i looked at the partition table in win 7 and saw 1 system, 2 c: boot, page etc, 3 HP tools, 4 recovery, and 5 forget the name of this one. 5 different partitions. so i resized the c: partition and gained 230 gb of free space. shutdown and tried the live cd install with the resulting error. so,being confused by this as it appeared i had done nothing different than i had done with a vista dual boot i went into diskdrake to look at the partition table again with the following discovery: diskdrake showed the partition table like this 1 system, 2 HP tools, 3 c:, 4 raw space, 5 recovery and dont remember that one. so it appears that win 7 disk manager showed the partition table differently than diskdrake making the install to the 4th partition an invalid choice fo an os. what can i do at this point?

PS hello youcantoo miss ya buddy

[Bald Brick]

Boot the live CD; run the command

Code: [Select]

fdisk -lu=cylindersand post the output.

That will show us precisely how your drives are partitioned.

A hard drive can only have four primary partitions, numbered from 1 to 4 in Linux. If you need more partitions than that one of the primary partitions must be an extended partition, i.e. a container for a number of "logical" partitions. The logical partitions are numbered from 5 up even if you don't have all the primary partitions you could have. But remember that the extended partition is just a container: you can't install anything there directly; you have to use the logical partitions it contains.

[loudog]

[guest@localhost guest]$ fdisk -lu=cylinders
fdisk: invalid option -- '='

Usage: fdisk [-b SSZ] [-u] DISK     Change partition table
       fdisk -l [-b SSZ] [-u] DISK  List partition table(s)
       fdisk -s PARTITION           Give partition size(s) in blocks
       fdisk -v                     Give fdisk version
Here DISK is something like /dev/hdb or /dev/sda
and PARTITION is something like /dev/hda7
-u: give Start and End in sector (instead of cylinder) units
-b 2048: (for certain MO disks) use 2048-byte sectors
[guest@localhost guest]$

this is the return from the command you requested athough it gave an invalid option i believe this has the info you need, thanks for the reply

[Old-Polack]

[guest@localhost guest]$ fdisk -lu=cylinders
fdisk: invalid option -- '='

Usage: fdisk [-b SSZ] [-u] DISK     Change partition table
       fdisk -l [-b SSZ] [-u] DISK  List partition table(s)
       fdisk -s PARTITION           Give partition size(s) in blocks
       fdisk -v                     Give fdisk version
Here DISK is something like /dev/hdb or /dev/sda
and PARTITION is something like /dev/hda7
-u: give Start and End in sector (instead of cylinder) units
-b 2048: (for certain MO disks) use 2048-byte sectors
[guest@localhost guest]$

this is the return from the command you requested athough it gave an invalid option i believe this has the info you need, thanks for the reply

No, it does not.

Run the command as root, and try in this form;

[root@localhost ~]# fdisk -l -u=cylinders                     <Enter>

If that doesn't work, then try;

[root@localhost ~]# fdisk -l                     <Enter>

[loudog]

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xf4aea3a7

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1           1         992+  42  SFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2   *           1          26      203776   42  SFS
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda3              26       30051   241174528   42  SFS
/dev/sda4           30051       60802   247006232   42  SFS

ok the second command returned i believe what was requested so i have 3 people who are amazed at what im doing just off the live cd (release 10.1) i know its an old release but its convincing them as i quickly resolved in minutes some wireless problems using pclinuxos off the live cd that they have been working for hours. eagerly awaiting the replies and many thanks

[dvhenry]

The obvious one is that you need to delete one of those partitions and create an extended primary for your Linux partitions.

The not so obvious one is that you may need to convert your windows NTFS 'dynamic disks' to 'basic disks' (SFS in this case is almost certainly NTFS 'dynamic disks') I have used http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk for this, on this liveCD http://partedmagic.com/doku.php?id=downloads If you find you need to do this I can give further details.

So far you have 2 out of 3 of HPs' favorite tricks, I wonder if you also have the third (EFI instead of BIOS), what is the model number of this machine? In any case 2 out of 3 aint bad!!  

[loudog]

it is a pavillion g7-1077nr notebook pc. will delete the hp partition saving the data of course and create an extended one. will post back. thanks

[loudog]

ooooooohhhhhh icky. yep the attempt to create the extended partition and subsequent install resulted in a slight setback. the win 7 install and recovery are unbootable and the install of pclos resulted in an error from diskdrake. i am responding using the live cd as it still works but any attempt to start diskdrake from the pcc reports a warning this program exited abnormally. i am going to attempt to download the programs to deal with the new ntfs format and see if i can make some headway on this machine. any advice will be appreciated.

[dvhenry]

Sorry to hear this did not work out well.

yep the attempt to create the extended partition and subsequent install resulted in a slight setback. the win 7 install and recovery are unbootable

unbootable does not always mean lost, so for now I would put that to one side.

the install of pclos resulted in an error from diskdrake.

Can you give us that exact error message?

i am responding using the live cd as it still works but any attempt to start diskdrake from the pcc reports a warning this program exited abnormally. i am going to attempt to download the programs to deal with the new ntfs format and see if i can make some headway on this machine. any advice will be appreciated.

Testdisk can potentially give some joy here, have a 'preferably' stress free try!! See what you get.
Ask any questions you may have.

[loudog]

well i finally was able to load the live cd into memory so i could burn the partition magic iso. this did the desired function as it quickly erased the windows partitions so i could install the live cd. since i dont use windows it was fine. although through some investigation i discovered the processor on this laptop does not support virtulization wich doesnt matter as i dont use virtual box either. stone cold pclos user now so all is good thank you all for the help time to go to the laptop hardware section as the sound doesnt work but first ill download the lastest iso and see if that works.

[dvhenry]

well i finally was able to load the live cd into memory so i could burn the partition magic iso. this did the desired function as it quickly erased the windows partitions so i could install the live cd. since i dont use windows it was fine.

Glad to see it worked out OK.

For those with a similar problem but feel they can't yet live without windows, and stumble across this thread, I will suggest some precautions and try to better outline a procedure for dealing with this.

Precautions:
 Most computers that come with windows preinstalled have a program that allows you to create recovery disks, this is the first thing you should do when you buy the machine.
And of course you should always ensure you have a working backup of any important data, but especially if you are making any changes to your partitions.

ooooooohhhhhh icky. yep the attempt to create the extended partition and subsequent install resulted in a slight setback. the win 7 install and recovery are unbootable and the install of pclos resulted in an error from diskdrake.

At this point the partitioning has changed and I should have requested the new output of fdisk -l
TestDisk http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk is likely to be the best chance of recovery, there are detailed tutorials in the link so I won't go into detail of its use here, but it allows you to see file lists of data on the partitions it finds, allows you to save data from those partitions, and to exit the program without writing changes to disk, so if used sensibly is safe to use.
It has a menu entry for it on the PartedMagic live CD  http://partedmagic.com/doku.php?id=downloads

If all goes well you would then have your original partitioning back, and a working windows.
If so you would boot Parted magic and run Test Disk again following this tutorial http://mypkb.wordpress.com/2007/03/28/how-to-non-destructively-convert-dynamic-disks-to-basic-disks/
Now you should be able to delete one of those partitions and create an extended primary for your Linux partitions.
And finally, install Linux.

[loudog]

thank you dvhenery and others for the help. i realized that i dont have windows on any other machines so why this one and that was the deciding factor in using pmgic to just erase all data and install pclinuxos alone. back to computing joy.