Am I the only one bothered by this?

Post Reply New Topic

I've noticed that Windows 7 takes up all four primary partitions on a hard drive, making it impossible to dual boot anything else without sabatoging it. To my knowledge it's the only operating system in existence that does this. I'm trying to install Debian on a partition, and I had to delete the recovery partition and the FAT partition in order to make room for it (since you can only have four), and now Windows doesn't work. Does it have to use all four? No. Windows XP only requires one partition, and it functions just fine. Does it add functionality to the OS? Not that I am aware of, and even if it does, there are probably other and better ways of achieving that affect. All it does is make Windows 7 one of the most crippling OS's I've ever used.

Huh, I installed Win 7 a few months ago on the second of 3 partitions on a drive, and it's working ok.

If it's that you're running out of primary partitions, that's what extended partitions are for (in case you didn't already know that). I'm not sure how you force the installer to make extended partitions -- maybe there's an option to manually partition the drive.

You probably have much more technical expertise than I do. I have no idea how to install Windows 7 to a single partition. All I know is that the version I have uses four partitions: SYSTEM (NTFS sda1), the main portion (NTFS sda2), Recover (NTFS sda3), and HP_TOOLS (FAT32 sda4). One or more of these may have been an extended partition, though the partition manager GParted didn't say they were.

Is it a Windows 7 install DVD, or a custom "restore" DVD that came with the computer? It just sounds like a custom install to me, since the one I did was all default
except for choosing which partition to install to. If it's a custom installer and there's no option (like "advanced or custom" or whatever) to let you manually partition the drive, I'm not sure what you can do.

If there is a way to manually partition, though, set it up like:

(primary1) (primary2) (primary3) (extended1 (logical1) (logical2) (logical3) (logical4) (...) )

system main recover tools linux linux linux

So, 3 primary partitions, 1 extended partition, and 4 "logical drives" (partitions) inside the extended partition (best to create them in that order).

The only other thing is can think of it to repartition (destroy) the HP_TOOLS partition into an extended partition (and then create logical drives in it), on the chance that HP_TOOLS isn't too important.

Actually, HP_TOOLS kinda is important. Windows is completely fuked on my machine because I deleted it and Recovery, so now the only way I can boot is from a live CD.

An attempt by Microsoft to remove a clients ability to use another operating system?

What you described has nothing to do with Windows. What actually happened is that your OEM (HP I assumed) has set up your harddisk in the GUID partition scheme.

From what you have written, HP_TOOLS should be the EFI sytem parition. It's used by EFI firmware (the BIOS replacement) to store the system wide boot loader. SYSTEM should be the partition for the Windows boot loader. Windows will create this partition when installing to a GUID disk. Recover is the Windows recovery partition that is used to repair Windows in case something bad happens. It's also needed for BitLocker. The unnamed one is the partition for Windows.

GUID partition table doesn't have the 4 partitions limit of MBR, so if all the OS you used are compatible, you can add as many partitions as you wanted.

Yeah, it sounds like in this case the problem was caused by your OEM, not my Microsoft. HP is well known for sucking at computer set-up.

Do a repartition and clean install of Windows 7 from a normal install DVD (it should have been included with your comp, but I don't know if that's true with HP) and after that it should be simple to install Debian next to it.

Yes, but even then you will need to watch for the "custom installation" option, and I would have only the intended partition available during the installation. I have had Win7 (and even XP) scan the drive/s and make decisions like that on its own where more than one partition was available. Overall, however, and as already mentioned, you are now having to choose between an OEM setup and your own ... and that means you will also need one or more OEM disk/s if you want to have "HP_Tools" and possibly certain drivers or whatever else available later.

judging form reading the posts above to me it sounds best if you . Put n a new Hard drive or use an external one. (You could eve replace the primary HD or put n a secondary one and put it as a slave)

It sound like your partition table could be using the GPT (GUID partition table) scheme rather than the older MBR scheme. The good news is that a GPT partition table allows for more than for primary partitions while the bad news is that GParted doesn't officially support it and recognises it as an MBR partition table. That's why you can't make any more partitions with GParted. However, if you burn a new GParted live CD then that CD will also include an application called gdisk which allows you to edit GPT partitions. This gdisk application is still in the beta stage though and it's command line based. The following is a link to the home page of gdisk:

http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/.

If you are using a GUID partition table and you can get that application working then there would be no need to do a repartition or boot Debian from an external hard drive. You can just make a new partition for Debian.