HP Win7 takes all 4 primary partitions [Solved]

[kp2george75]

My old HP laptop running SL7 died and I replaced it with a new HP Pavilion dv7 model with a 1 TB HD factory loaded with Win7 using Logical Block Addressing (LBA). With all 4 primary partitions taken for the Win7 installation, there is no room to install SL7.

Can anyone help by telling me how to install SL7 for dual booting? I need to keep Win7 for legacy programs.

Thank you.

HP Pavilion dv7-6199us, Intel 2.2 GHz quad core processor, RADEON graphics, 8 GB RAM, 1 TB HD

[batvink]

hi there,
If the partitions are empty, (no program files, or games)
you can just install sabayon, next to Win7.
at the partitioning scheme, choose to manually partition
and remove those empty partitions, mostly sda2, 3, and 4
If it's written to it, (programs that you use), i suppose you backup the files you need, for reinstalling, later on, and cleanup the partitions.
But it can be tricky, 'cause sometimes the system preserves a small partition at the beginning of the drive for backup/restore, so windows is actually on the second partition. (sda2)

Can you show here the partitioning layout of your drive, paste it here on the forum?
you can use windows itself for that or Sabayon CD, gparted...

[kp2george75]

batvick, thanks for your reply. Here is the partition information you requested for the 1 TB HD.

Partition file system label size used unused flag partition type

/dev/sda1 ntfs system 199.00 MiB 66.29 MiB 132.41 MiB boot primary
/dev/sda2 ntfs 916.71 GiB 40.43 GiB 876.28 GiB primary
/dev/sda3 ntfs RECOVERY 14.50 GiB 12.89 GiB 1.62 GiB primary
/dev/sda4 fat 32 HP_TOOLS 102.71 MiB 14.03 MiB 88.68 MiB lba primary

Thank you for your help. KP2George

[batvink]

allright.
the first partition (sda1) is a small boot partition. you can leave that as is.

The second, (sda2) is windows, and is way too big. i would resize it to 60 or 100Gib. not more.
That should be big enough to even install MS-Office and photoshop if you want., and have a pagefile.sys too. (virtual memory)

I see that the recovery partition (sda3) is written to. You could find out what program is making the backups and uninstall it.
The tools on sda4, if you want to keep them you can move them to sda2.

Now, these are the steps i would take to install Sabayon along side to Windows:
1> boot into Windows, find the program that writes to sda3, the recovery partition and uninstall the program.
2> move the HP_TOOLS from sda4 to sda2 (in windows: C:\ )
3> reboot, and boot into Sabayon liveCD.
4> If gparted is installed, start it. otherwise, install it : sudo equo update --force
and: sudo equo install gparted. start the program.
5> within gparted, delete sda3 and sda4. press apply. Wait for the program to reload.
6> right-click on sda2, and choose: move/resize partition. in the window that appears, you see a bar on the top, with left and right arrows. click-and hold the right arrow, and drag it to the left, until you reached the size you want. eg. 100GiB. When you drag, you see the numbers changing...
when done, click apply. Wait for the program to finish and reload.
7> exit gparted, If there's a "install Sabayon" icon on the Desktop open it. Otherwise, open a terminal, and type: installer
8> when Sabayon comes to the partitioning part, choose to manually partition.
9> at the partitioning scheme, you shoult have a free space of 840GiB of something like that.
normal mbr disks can have max. 4 primary partitions, so:
10> add primary partition, label: /boot fs: ext2 size: 60 - to 100MB
11> add Extended partition, size: rest of free space
12> add the rest of partitions you want: / size: 10 - 15GiB /swap size: 1024MB /home size: rest of free space. (all logical partitions)
accept, and proceed with installation. You can write Grub to /dev/sda (NOT /dev/sda1)
it will overwrite the mbr of Windows. (windows will be available in the Grub menu)
When Sabayon is done installing, reboot, and if everything went well, you will be presented with the Grub boot menu., Sabayon, as well as Windows. Try both to boot from.
Good luck

[kp2george75]

batvink, sir. Thank you very much for a suggested protocol to condense Win7 on my HD and make room for an SL7 installation.

However, you recommend one step that I do not know how to do. This is in reference to the Win7 recovery partition (sda3) where you say to "find out what program is making the backups and uninstall it". How can I find it? (I am not a regular user of any Win OS.)

Thanks, kp2george75

[batvink]

okay, now, let me see:

/dev/sda3 RECOVERY is 14.50 GiB and 12.89 GiB written to it., so it's almost full.
First i have to know what files/directories are sitting on your D:\ and E:\ aka "/dev/sda3" and "/dev/sda4" Can you show me that?
'cause it may be the disk that Windows Restore uses for it's Restore points.

[kp2george75]

Here is your requested info on what is in Win7 drives D: and E:

D:\>dir
Volume in drive D is RECOVERY
Volume Serial Number is CE43-01F3
Directory of D:\
12/15/2011 4:37 PM HPSF_Rep.txt
1 file 21 bytes
0 Dir(s) 1,730,510,848 bytes free

/dev/sda4 = E:\ >dir
The devise is not ready

I opened the HPSF_Rep.txt file in both Notebook and Libre Office and got the same thing in both - a date and time: "12/15/2011 4:37:39 PM"

Thanks for your help. KP2George75

[batvink]

now, that's strange, 'cause your partition table shows that 12.89GB is written to /dev/sda3 , so there must be hidden files/folders on it.
maybe you can see in Linux if there are hidden files/folders on the drive, and find out for yourself if you want to keep them or not.

Ehm, if there's nothing else you can find, i think you probably safe to delete the partition and follow the steps i provided you.

[kp2george75]

batvink, Sir,

Here is an update on your request for the contents of the "hidden" Win7 drives D: and E:

D: is listed as (RECOVERY (D:) with 8 file folders, 1 system file, 1 Configuration Settings, and 1 *.txt file, as follows:

$RECYCLE.BIN
Boot
FactoryUpdate
hp
preload
recovery
RM_Reserve
SystemVolumeInformation
bootmgr (system file)
Desktop.ini Configuration settings
HPSF_Rep.txt

E: is listed as:BD-Rom Drive (E:)

listing shows 1 file: [.shellClassinfo] which contains:
LocalizedResourceName=%SystemRoot%\system32\shell32.dll -21815

My request to download E: gave a system response of asking for a write-to devise of a flash drive or CD/DVD
The only file that was produced and copied was as follows:
desktop.ini 12/14/2011 12:01 Configuration Settings 1 KB

Again, thanks. KP2George75

[batvink]

Yup. D:\ (/dev/sda3) seems to me like a recovery disk.
you were not intended to use Windows much? Then you can del. that partition.
(i would first move the folders: "FactoryUpdate" and "hp" to C:\ , they probably contain windows-drivers of your motherboard.)

normally, BD-Rom Drives are Blue-ray disks., or could be a virtual drive or even build-in memory-card,
but it can't be, 'cause it's addressed to /dev/sda4
There's not much of important sitting on that drive, so you can delete /dev/sda4 as well.

Beware, I can not "really" see the contents of your folders/drives, but based on the information you posted here, i think it's safe to delete /sda3 /sda4, after moving "FactoryUpdate" and "hp" to C:\

Now, there are many things that can go wrong, during the proces, which can end up in a broken system, so please don't hold me responsible. I just gave you some sort of guide of how to pull this through, based on your information. It's up to you, if you want to do this. Good luck

oh, and sir, it's just batvink. you can leave that "sir", sir.
i'm just a normal guy, trying to help a hand where i can.