[james3302]

I have Windows Vista and I am wanting to install Ubuntu as a dual boot. I started the live CD and played with it for a little while. Then I decided to install so I clicked the install icon and it started to install. Once it got to the partition part of the installation it asked me I wanted to do it manually or what. I told it automatically and then it showed that I would have a 1.5Gb partition for Ubuntu. I thought why should I only have 1.5Gb when I have a 250Gb Hd. So I changed the size to 3Gb(biggest it would let me make it). While it was trying to resize the partition I got an error. Not it will not boot to Vista. I opened GParted and this is what I have

/dev/sda1 Fat 16 227.06 Gb 39.92 used Boot
/dev/sda2 extended 3.56Gb --- -----
/dev/sda3 linux-swap 3.56Gb --- ----
unallocated 2.21Gb


sda2 and sda3 show a lock beside them, I guess meaning they are locked.

I just want to have more than 3.5Gb of space for Ubuntu and also keep my Vista without having to re-install.

When I restart without the Live CD in the CDROM I get

Boot From CD

Loading DRMX Version 8.00...

[james3302]

So I went ahead and tried to install it again and this time choose to let Ubuntu us the largest free part of the HD. Then it copied over all the files. But when I rebooted it came up and said

Boot from CD

Then it said cannot find OS.


Here's the partitions now. I seem to digging myself deeper and deeper. : (

/dev/sda1 Fat 16 227.06 Gb 39.92 used ---

/dev/sda2 extended 3.56Gb --- -----
/dev/sda5 linux-swap 3.56 Gb --- ---
/dev/sda6 linux-swap 164.7Mb --- ---

/dev/sda3 ext3 2.05Gb 2.05 used boot

[devils casper]

Is Vista OS booting up? First partition is formatted in FAT16 filesystem and that looks pretty strange.

[james3302]

well of course it did before I started messing with it, but now it just says no OS, but then again the partition that has Vista on it is not flagged as boot. But the Partition that supposedly has Linux on it is flagged as boot. Yea I thought Vista used Fat32 or NTFS.

I have always been able to get a dual boot to work, Just have to re-install Windows a few times kinda trial and error stuff. I would really like to do this without having to reinstall vista.

[james3302]

I mean can I delete the other partitions besides the on that has Vista, resize the Vista partition to make it smaller then make on big partition to install Ubuntu on? Would this cause me to loose the data on the Vista partition? May already be gone since it won't boot to it.

[yancek]

In your first post you said partitions sda2 and sda3 have locks beside them. sda2 is an extended partition and you can't install anything there without creating a logical partition first. sda3 is a swap and you can't install anything there either.

Your second post shows sda3 is an ext3 partition which is where ubuntu is installed. This post shows sda5 and sda6 as swap partitions. You don't need two swap partitions and 1GB is more than enough for most people.

Where did you install the bootloader when you did the ubuntu install? The mbr or the boot partition?

Can you boot up the live cd and do an 'fdisk -l' command and post it?

You should be able to resize vista with GParted and create a partition for ubuntu. Your current 2.05GB partition for it is a little small. The FAT16 thing is very weird, no idea how that happened.

[james3302]

Who do I get to the shell? I do not see where I can do that.

I went to my terminal and did a fdisk -l and it returned nothing.

Im not sure the boot loader installed, it just said that it was copying files and then it did nothing(progress bar went away and I was back to the Live Cd). So I should delete the smaller swap partition, make the partition with Vista smaller and make the ext partition bigger. How much bigger do you think? I will be installing some java compilers, and putting at least 3GB music on there for me to listen to.

Ah I had to open the root terminal and not just the terminal. here's the results of fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30394 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xf8000000

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 29641 238091301 6 FAT16
/dev/sda2 29642 30127 3903795 5 Extended
/dev/sda3 30128 30394 2144677+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda5 29642 30106 3735081 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 30107 30127 168651 82 Linux swap / Solaris

[james3302]

I don't have a boot/grub/menu.lst file. By the way

I deleted all the partitions except for the Vista one, then started the install of Ubuntu again this time doing that partitioning manually. I used a guide and made 512mb my swap file and rest of the free space 5.68 Gb my ext3 partition. When I continued this it the error I got.

File system doesn't have expected sizes for Windows to like it. Cluster size is 2k (1k expected); number of clusters is 24026 (47959 expected); size of FATs is 94 sectors (188 expected).

I can ignore it, but what will happen if I do?

Told it to ignore the error and its installing again.

[yancek]

Not sure how to combine unallocated space? Are they consecutive area? Do the fdisk -l again and check the 'Start' and 'End' numbers. If you don't have a menu.lst, your install didn't finish but that doesn't matter as you've deleted and will re-install. I'd carefully read all the options about where to install during the process. The one thing I would suggest is that you install the ubuntu bootloader (Grub) to the master boot record as it is easier to boot windows from linux/grub than to boot linux from windows.

Here's a site explaining how to boot Linux from windows if you choose that.
Linux.com :: Convert a Windows system to dual-boot Linux on a second drive

With ubuntu/grub, grub should detect your windows system and put an entry in the grub menu.lst file for windows and enable windows booting. Read carefully before making selections in the install!

A 5GB partition will be pretty small for ubuntu unless your just planning to check it out and not really use it.

[james3302]

I have deleted all partitions except for the one with Vista on it, that combined all unallocated partitions. I then installed Ubuntu on the 5.68 GB part. After reboot it did give me an option to use Vista so I figure I will throw in the Vista boot disk and do a recovery on it and see it that works. I tried to make the 227 GB Vista partition smaller, but it says that all 227 Gb is full and I know that's not right.