[SOLVED] Dual boot of windows (ext3 formatting)

[fwc]

Hello all,
I am trying to install the latest version of Mint and having some problems. I already have Windows XP installed and I want to keep it, so I took a 22GB partition (ntfs) I had and tried to format it into a 20BG ext3 partition and a 2GB swap (I have 1GB RAM). Unfortunately, the ext3 did not and will not format properly so I currently have a swap and no ext3 file system. So, I was wondering if there was an easy way in bash (or somewhere else) to format the partition into ext3 if I can get it back to ntfs or just from "free space". Thanks very much for any help and I hope this isn't too hard.

[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !

First of all, if you have 1GB RAM then you do not need SWAP partition at all. Create 512MB SWAP partition though.

Lets check partition structure of your Hard disk first.
Open Terminal/Konsole and execute this

sudo fdisk -l

Post output here.

* Its small L in fdisk -l.

[fwc]

Thanks very much, here is the fdisk list

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x86c386c3

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 3824 30716248+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 3825 19457 125572072+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 3825 7648 30716248+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 7649 12110 35840983+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda7 12111 16708 36933403+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda8 17026 19457 19535008+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 16709 17025 2546271 82 Linux swap / Solaris

[Partition table entries are not in disk order

I thought I had to create a SWAP because it said to do so in the User guide
(http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/linuxmint.c...de/english.pdf)

Edit: After reading though again I realize this isn't a necessary step, just optional.

you can see in this example the first hard-drive has 2 Linux partitions (of type “ext3”)
and the second hard-drive has 4 Windows partitions (2 of type FAT and 2 of type NTFS).
In order to install Linux Mint you need to create 2 new partitions, one of type SWAP, and
one of type EXT3.
If the existing partitions on your hard-drive take all the space and you can’t create any
new partitions, you can “Edit” a partition and change its size.

As you can see there is sda8 already formatted as Linux but when I go to the end of install it says

The ext3 file system creation in partition #8 of SCSI3 (0,0,0) (sda) failed.

[devils casper]

Partition structure looks good to me. Start installation again and select Manual Partitioning in Partition Section. Select ext3 partition ( /dev/sda8 ) and assign it / mount point. Installer will detect SWAP Partition itself. Continue installation and it should work fine this time.

[fwc]

Thanks very much, I got it working. I removed the swap and then deselected the "format" option and it worked. I don't know if the format can sometimes mess it up but anyways its up and running.

[devils casper]

Glad to help you !
Do start a new thread if you have any other question.