[Shady]

Not sure if this should go in this forum or Windows 7. I recently purchased a laptop with Win7 on it (HP). Tried to install Ubuntu 11.04 alongside it, but it was unsuccessful. Kept telling me it cannot partition, blah blah blah. HP created 4 partitions and Ubuntu wouldn't let me create another one. Tried shrinking the C: drive in Windows, and it worked. But when I went back to Ubuntu to install it, still no luck. After about 3 hours of trying this, I gave up and just did a full install of Ubuntu 11.04. Should be getting the Win7 recovery CD's today or tomorrow and plan on loading Win7 again on here. However, I still want dual boot. Is there a good guide to doing this from Ubuntu to Win7 vs Win7 to Ubuntu?

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you had a recovery partition on the pc so there was no need to order disks,
you could have made one,

but hindsight is a pain,

you say you had 4 partitions, my guess is is that they were logical partitions,
it doesn't matter what size disk you have, it will only allow a maximum of 4 logical partitions or 3 logical partitions and one extended partition, where you can create more logical partitions,
so installing ubuntu would have needed a logical partition - but you were maxed out at your 4,

there are a few ways of dual-booting and other ways of having multiple operating systems,

other ways - virtualisation, vmware player, virtualbox and microsoft virtual pc are a few ways and free,
virtualbox is the one i use (as i run linux), i have xp and w2k in a virtual machine,
if you do this with windows then note that microsoft virtual pc does not support linux or unix,

ready made and configured disk images are available for vmware and virtualbox,

dual-booting - my advice would be to install windows first then install ubuntu,
grub should automagically add windows to the boot menu,
the windows bootloader will not recognize there is linux installed if you install ubuntu first,

the downside of this is that if you do not like ubuntu and just delete it through windows then you will be unable to boot as the boot files are on the linux partition,
a repair of your mbr is the only option (apart from a complete install of windows)

there is also wubi, this installs ubuntu as though its a windows program and can be removed via add/remove programs

http://www.ubuntu.co...ndows-installer

there is also the double hdd way of dual-booting, installing windows on one drive, linux on another,
making the linux drive first boot drive and editing its boot file to allow booting into windows,

or using you boot options key on your keyboard,

in my view this is one of the safer ways as if you don't like linux then you can just set your windows drive as first boot drive and delete the linux install from windows - or delete the windows install from linux, without being unable to boot into your chosen system,

[calvert]

you had a recovery partition on the pc so there was no need to order disks,
you could have made one,

but hindsight is a pain,

you say you had 4 partitions, my guess is is that they were logical partitions,
it doesn't matter what size disk you have, it will only allow a maximum of 4 logical partitions or 3 logical partitions and one extended partition, where you can create more logical partitions,
so installing ubuntu would have needed a logical partition - but you were maxed out at your 4,

there are a few ways of dual-booting and other ways of having multiple operating systems,

other ways - virtualisation, vmware player, virtualbox and microsoft virtual pc are a few ways and free,
virtualbox is the one i use (as i run linux), i have xp and w2k in a virtual machine,
if you do this with windows then note that microsoft virtual pc does not support linux or unix,

ready made and configured disk images are available for vmware and virtualbox,

dual-booting - my advice would be to install windows first then install ubuntu,
grub should automagically add windows to the boot menu,
the windows bootloader will not recognize there is linux installed if you install ubuntu first,

the downside of this is that if you do not like ubuntu and just delete it through windows then you will be unable to boot as the boot files are on the linux partition,
a repair of your mbr is the only option (apart from a complete install of windows)

there is also wubi, this installs ubuntu as though its a windows program and can be removed via add/remove programs

http://www.ubuntu.co...ndows-installer

there is also the double hdd way of dual-booting, installing windows on one drive, linux on another,
making the linux drive first boot drive and editing its boot file to allow booting into windows,

or using you boot options key on your keyboard,

in my view this is one of the safer ways as if you don't like linux then you can just set your windows drive as first boot drive and delete the linux install from windows - or delete the windows install from linux, without being unable to boot into your chosen system,

[Shady]

Yeah i wasn't aware i could burn a recovery CD(s) from that partition till it was too late. Oh well though. I got the cd's today and said the [bleep] with it, and put Win7 back on the laptop. back to 4 partitions now. i've had linux before and love it. i just bought this win7 laptop so i can play some starcraft 2 with the brother-in-law. but would prefer to use Ubuntu (hence why i want to dual boot). i was going to use that Wubi deal, but heard it's not that good. better to do it manually. but how the heck am i going to do that if im maxed out at 4 partitions?? since it's a laptop i can't put in 2 hard drives. might be stuck w/just Win7 on this sucker. oh well, at least I got another laptop (the one i am using as I type this) that has Ubuntu 10.10

[michaelg9]

Hello

You can install Ubuntu after windows. However it seems that the reverse, Windows after Ubuntu is more difficult, because Microsoft's partitioning system can't manage the partitions of Ubuntu, so you have to free up some space manually, perhaps from Ubuntu.

If you have Windows and you want to install Ubuntu alongside, that's easier, because the Ubuntu CD will detect the windows partition and automatically suggest a solution:

However if you want to add more space in one OS than the suggested solution has given, you can drag and drop the pointer to your needs

You can see here that before (the first toolbar) the entire drive was given to windows, and after (second toolbar) space has been given to ubuntu. I can use that black pointer to adjust the size of partitions.

Shady didn't you get that option? Are you sure you were using 11.04 version?

[calvert]

.....back to 4 partitions now.......

why are you installing with 4 partitions ?

maybe you could just delete 1 or 2

[Shady]

i got it working. had somebody from IRC help me. i wasn't installing on 4 partitions. it's what HP has setup 1 for system tools, 1 for main files, 1 for recovery, and i don't know what the last one is for. since i had the recovery cds i had the guy on IRC help me delete the recovery partition and shrink the main one, blah blah blah... got it working Thank you though guys for the help. Would be nice if one day Linux takes over this Windoze world.