Ubuntu
gparted package

win7 gone incompatible ?

Asked by Ralph Ulrich

A friend needed help a second time for his notebook didn't start anything.

Here is what happened, his notebook had partitioned:
1. Samsung recovery
2. Mini Win7 starter partition
3. Win7 ntfs
4. an empty ntfs

So, when Ubuntu karmic install, I removed 4. partition and created in 4. extended partition
/dev/sda5 swap 5GB
/dev/sda6 karmic 30GB
/dev/sda7 home 60GB
/dev/sda8 vfat 60GB
/dev/sda9 vfat 60GB

I wanted to be sure that the ubuntu installer expands extended partition to all rest disk, so I just created the vfats....
My friend is about 80 years old and did an error: When using win7 he wanted to format an usb-stick but formated
/dev/sda9 with ntfs
Which was not the fatal error, but:

Since then the grub bootloader was not started any more. Even Samsung recovery using F4 just after bios didn't work.
After re-grub the mbr I started win7 and saw there in the Windows Computer-Partitioning-Tool:
This shows 5 primary disks and only the last three partitions residing in the extended partition(*) !!! ???

(Which I stared at not believing ....)

(*) in the red rectangle

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Expired
For:
Ubuntu gparted Edit question
Assignee:
No assignee Edit question
Last query:
Last reply:
Revision history for this message
delance (olivier-delance) said : 		#1

Looks strange.
You could use a Live CD Ubuntu CD-ROM and launch Gparted to confirm partition.
Under DOS partition table, you can't have more than 4 primary partitions.

Revision history for this message
Ralph Ulrich (eulenreich) said : 		#2

I had confirmed the correct extended partitioning... And as I know
"you can't have more than 4 primary partitions" I wrote:
"(Which I stared at not believing ....)"
...
Now it happened a second time that nothing started. For my friend is over 80 years old and didn't want to loose win7 I had to make a decision against my strong believes of ubuntu is better:
Using an available vista install cdrom I made a /fixmbr. Which made win7 starting again. And I deleted all linux partitions :( :( ;(

So, in the end this message is just a warning:

Something is gone incompatible with win7 partitioning scheme !!!

(but I'm still curious if someone can confirm and what went wrong, for I want to be prepared when installing ubuntu for other friends...)

Revision history for this message
Ralph Ulrich (eulenreich) said : 		#3

I've found some corresponding windows bug journals:
http://www.multibooters.co.uk/quirks.html
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931854

I'm discussing this issue in a german forum:
http://sidux.com/PNphpBB2-viewtopic-t-19795-postdays-0-postorder-asc.html
considering another Windows-Linux Parallel installation procedure regarding partitioning....

Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said : 		#4

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.

Revision history for this message
Ralph Ulrich (eulenreich) said : 		#5

This issue should be solved in lucid for its using of libparted-2.2