Dual boot W7 and Ubuntu

Here's the scenario:

Shrunk my C partition by 20GB with W7
It now says 'unallocated'
Installing Ubuntu I choose 'side by side'
It says my 20GB partition is unusable
I try to format the partition in *nix but says no root available.

Help!!!:cry:-D

 

You effectively "deleted" 20GB of your disk Augie. It is "unallocated", unformatted, unrecognizable by your system, and therefore does not exist.

I'm assuming you used GPartEd, or something similar. You should've formatted the "unallocated" area to EXT file format, and then chose that area of disk for installation, but you better be SURE it's the correct one or bad things will happen!

Alternatively, there is a safer way! Simply expand your C partition to its original capacity. THEN install Ubuntu and choose "side by side"; Ubuntu will "carve out" the space it needs, reformat it to EXT 3 or EXT 4, depending on version of Ubuntu, and you'll be good to go!

 

Hmm, I'll try it your way then. I decided to go whole hog with *nix on my second machine, the 2600K, but still have my W7 install if needed. I'm currently running Ubuntu 11.04 under VMWare 3.0.0(on purpose as it can 'see' and use my 8 cores as opposed to 3.0.1) but I wanted to eliminate the VM/W7 overhead to get better performance. Thanks, I'll post back with the results.

 

If you reinstall the Win MBR and then allow Linux to create the partition it is a bit more user friendly.

 

Good catch BOOOM! I interpreted his post as "I tried to install Ubuntu, but the disk wasn't right, so I abandoned it...now what."

Re-reading his post, it does indeed sound like he was successful with the Ubuntu install, but the partition size is not to his liking. If that is the case, I would recommend a LiveCD of GPartEd to expand his Windows (NTFS partition) or Ubuntu (EXT 3 or 4 partition, most likely identified as SDA3), as desired.

However, for a less experienced user, your advice is spot on, as usual! Augie, can you boot your machine into Win AND Ubuntu, choosing from them in a boot menu? If you can, follow my suggestion to expand your unallocated area to the partition you want to reclaim it to. If you CANNOT boot, then your MBR was corrupted by the abandoned Ubuntu install and follow BOOOM's suggestion.

FWIW, in multiple boot situations, Win must always be the 1st installation on the drive; Linux installations utilize GRUB (grand unified boot loader), which will "see" and will work with Win. Windows MBR will never work with anything but Win.

Lastly, in multiple boot situations, I'd recommend saving your "primary" distro of choice for the last install, as that will be the first and defaulted selection in the GRUB boot menu. For instance, in a Win7/Mint/Ubuntu triple boot arrangement where Ubuntu is the last install, your GRUB menu will appear as:

(current kernel) Ubuntu
(current kernel) Mint
Win7

While you can keyboard arrow to your preferred selection, doing nothing will default to the first entry in the list. Just trying to save you the frustration of multiple unnecessary reboots 'cuz you were distracted by another task at the opportune moment. That probably only happens to me, though! :-D

 

I was not successful because Ubuntu didn't like the partition that I had created. I'll expand the C drive back to its original size and try the side by side and see if it carves out it's own 20GB partition.

 

If you can boot into Win7, go right ahead and it'll work for you! If you can't, your MBR is corrupted, like BOOOM suggests, and you'll need to reinstall the MBR and verify that Win7 boots before proceeding with the dual boot.

Also, while backing up your data is ALWAYS understood, it's also a good idea to defrag Windows before attempting the Ubuntu dual-boot, as 1 stray block of data or metadata in a weird place could dramatically alter your suggested Ubuntu partition; and Ubuntu WILL suggest a size for you. As long as it's AT LEAST 20GB (it may be more!), proceed as planned. And while Ubuntu will install on a partition of less than 10GB, it has been my experience that a partition of that size is too small for anything productive. So, I'd say 20GB+ is a good size. Good luck!

 

Well, Ubuntu took over my free 280GB NTFS partition, no way to just make a 20GB partition, I'll have to redo the HDD as the drive letters are not in order and I can't even create a new partition in W7, says that I have the 4 max already.:confused Anyways, it's installed with the Grub menu, I've done this before with Vista but I must be missing something here, Ubuntu was never this stubborn before.

 

Damn man, the clean install doesn't even resemble the VM install except for the purple screen. On the VM, I had at the top left 'Applications/Places/System whereas there's none now with some stupid left hand sidebar stuff that I don't need. I want a terminal, the help was of no help.rolleyes Am I missing something again?:cry

Anyways, I restarted the job in VM so I have some 3 days now before the job finishes, to figure this out or however long it takes to figure this out. It's always best to back away from the keyboard when one is frustrated.:-D I'll post anything you need from the *nix share. Thanks again folks.:drink

 

sounds like your fresh install defaults to the new Unity interface, instead of the former Gnome desktop. I seem to remember reading that VM installs of Ubuntu 11.04 wouldn't install Unity because of GPU requirements that VM can't handle; so I'm assuming you had a Gnome desktop on your Ubuntu VM.

I believe I also read that, although Unity would be the default desktop, Gnome is available for those who prefer Gnome. If true, it's still there, just not default anymore.

At the Ubuntu login screen, can you choose the Gnome desktop as an option at the bottom of the screen, next to accessibility options? If it's not an option, we'll need to install that from software center(?) but make sure you use Gnome 2 for the familiarity you're looking for. Gnome 3 is in the works and looks similar to Unity...

 

Yup, I think you're exactly right on Unity as the VM install said that I didn't have the hardware, which is correct. As to the boot screen, I had two Ubuntu choices and neither worked, they were exactly the same. The rest of the boot screen was diagnostics and W7 for a total of 6 possibilities including 'accessibility'.

Gnome 2 is going to be on its way soon. Thanks man, it's not my first rodeo with *nix but they must have changed a lot over the last 2 years.:banghead

 

Now I'm confused...

The boot screen is where you'll make a choice of the OS you want to use; the login screen is where you login the user for the OS you have selected.

Your description of a boot screen suggests you've installed Ubuntu 2x, resulting in a triple boot; Ubuntu, Ubuntu, & Win7, with options for recovery/failsafe modes for each.

However, you state you have "two Ubuntu choices and neither worked." But in an earlier post, you describe Ubuntu's new Unity interface and the only thing looking familiar to you is the color purple. This would suggest you CAN boot into Ubuntu, but neither Ubuntu presents the Gnome desktop you're looking for.

If your situation is the former, I'm not quite sure what went wrong, other than the GRUB menu got corrupted somehow with the second redundant install of Ubuntu. Not sure how to help you with that, as I've never been there and don't want to be the reason you borked your system...(paging BOOMM!)

If your situation is the LATTER, you're making the wrong selection at the LOGIN screen! When you select a user to login, a ribbon appears at the bottom of the screen with pulldown menu selectors for Language, Keyboard, and Sessions. I assume your Language defaults to English, your Keyboard defaults to USA, and your session defaults to Unity. Upon selecting a user, but before entering the user password, change the default session to Gnome before hitting Log In. This will result in Gnome becoming the default desktop session in place of Unity. If Gnome is not present in the menu, Gnome must be installed. However Gnome 3 is the latest and greatest version of Gnome and supposedly looks very similar to Unity, which you state you don't care for. So be careful to install Gnome 2 for the desktop session you are looking for! But I'm fairly confident "Gnome" will be in the session pulldown menu for you...

I hope this is more clear for you; I suspect you're right where you want to be, just 1 simple click away from making your preferred selection!

 

I passed on 11.04 due to change on address and headaches with Unity. I have considered LinuxMint Debian as an alternative. I have not mastered conky/lua so upgrade is back burner for now.

The preferrred dual-boot install was to install Windows first and then let Linux move to the side. I am not sure if that is the same for Natty.

AS SOON as you enter Grub, hold shift to bring up Grub Menu. My last kernel upgrade did not digest Nvidia and I had to search for this to boot myself . Also change in address means no occupation and I have been spending time looking for work and studying online to recover licenses surrendered years ago when I moved to the land of Fruits & Nuts.


Ubuntu DualBoot Wiki

 

you can choose manual storage
and choose format is EXT4 , mount point / , click format = yes .
then click forward , linux install automatic , and then it choose grub as default boot loader.

 

Welcome aboard to MG's quyvuong00! Thanks for the info but I can't use ext4 because it seriously hampers folding@home when it's writing the final results. I've since gone back to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and it installed very nicely. I'll be converting this rig to a *nix machine only pretty soon and I'll see then if 11.04 can install ext3 on a clean HDD.

As you can see, I'm a *nix n00b but I like how far it has come with a nice GUI and not needing the terminal for every little thing anymore. That would be tough for me to 'get it' at my age. Thanks again.

 

ubuntu 10.04 lts is ext4 as well,

9.04 was the last release with ext3

try this as as normal user in a terminal

Code:

df -T

to determine your file system