Dual boot slaskware 14.0 and windows 7

[skiabox]

I have a windows 7 dell laptop.
It has 3 partitions.
One ΟΕΜ partition 39mb, one ntfs partition 218.20gb (boot, pagefile, primary), and one recovery ntfs partition 14.65gb (system, active, primary).
I have also created a slackware v14.0 dvd.
How can I make this system dual boot?
Thank you.

[yancek]

If you have three partitions, you should be able to create another Extended partition and create a logical partition within the Extended on which to put Slackware. That is, if there is any space left of the disk. If you can boot any Linux Live CD as root and open a terminal and run this command: fdisk -l (lower case Letter L in the command) and post the output it would tell us that information. You need to take care when installing that you do not install over one of your windows partitions.

[skiabox]

fdisk -l gives :

Device | Boot | Start | End | Blocks | Id | System
/dev/sda1 | | 63 | 80324 | 40131 | de | Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 | * | 81920 | 30801919 | 15360000 | 7 | HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 | | 30801920 | 488395119 | 228796600 | 7 | HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

[jayd512]

Hello and Welcome!

I would advise using a tool such as Parted Magic to resize your Windows partition, then create a new extended partition for your Linux install.
From here, just boot up with your Slackware disc, and point the installer to your new partition.

Be sure to make a back-up of any important data before altering your partitions, just in case something goes wrong.

[skiabox]

Is there a step-by-step guide on how to partition the existing disk?

[yancek]

Is there a step-by-step guide on how to partition the existing disk?

Yes. Large number of sites including the one below which has images of the step-by-step process. If you have only one hard drive, it should simplify things. In the link below in the third image you should see the different partitions and their size/used/unused will be shown. Select the largest partition to resize. You will need to download Parted Magic and burn it as an image to a CD and then boot the computer with the CD in the drive.

using_gparted

[skiabox]

Nice guide, although I believe I should use ext4 instead of ext3.
Correct me if I am wrong.

[yancek]

I should use ext4 instead of ext3.

It's optional but, ext4 is the default for Slackware 14.

[jayd512]

As mentioned, ext4 is the default, but it supports various other filesystems.