[SOLVED]Install Linux on a windows vista preinstalled laptop

meitnerium · n00b Joined: 11 Feb 2003 Posts: 40

Hi,
I buy a HP DV9330. This laptop come with windows vista preinstalled. This have 2 hard drive on it. For the moment, the only thing I have donw is load a knoppix 5.1 dvd on it. All hardware like to be well suported. But now I want to install gentoo.

If I run gparted from knoppix, I cant put some place at the beginning of the 1st hard drive. I wanted to do that, to put the boot and the swap partition at this place. I think, if boot partition are not at the begining of the 1st partition, I will have problem to install it on the mbr ...

My other option is to use partition magic, but I don t have this software for this moment. I cant reinstall the windows, since the only thing I have is a partition on my first disc to reinstall all the system, it s a 8 Gig pattition at the end of the fisrt disc, and i m pretty sure that reinstallation will blank all hd, and recreate partition like when I receive my laptop. So I can t start a Windows installation with free place for linux.

Do you have an idea?
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Voici la solution : http://www.perdu.com/

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Thu May 03, 2007 2:06 pm Post subject:

meitnerium,

Swap can be anywhere on the system.
/boot must be somewhere the BIOS can read. On a modern system, thats anywhere too.

Every now and again, HDD sizes grow beyond the BIOS ability to read them all, then /boot is placed entirely within the BIOS readable part of the drive so that all the files needed to boot can be read.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

meitnerium · n00b Joined: 11 Feb 2003 Posts: 40

ok nice, I have to read about new hardware restriction :oops:

Thx

_________________
Voici la solution : http://www.perdu.com/

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Fri May 04, 2007 12:05 pm Post subject:

meitnerium,

Read the Large Drive HOWTO on www.tldp.org
The problem came up first when HDD reached 520Mb and recurred at 2, 4 and 8GB while C/H/S addressing and various C/H/S to LBA mappings were in use.

LBA has been changed twice- once at 33GB and again at 137Gb. We now use 48 bit LBA, which will be good until drives reach 256Tb.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.