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| If all else fails |
You can only have a maximum of 4 primary partitions on a hard drive. When I got my laptop, it was already formatted into 4 occupied partitions. Why in the world would HP waste a primary partition with 100 MBs of stuff that could easily be put somewhere else?
Anyway. The first thing I had to do was delete one of the partitions so that I could use it for Linux. I had a partition called “HP Tools.” I guess this partition is used for HP’s QuickWeb. This feature is for booting up quickly straight into the internet without loading up Windows. Personally, I would never use this feature, so removing this partition wasn’t a problem. In fact, I’m not even 100% sure this partition actually is for HP tools. All I know is I’ve never used QuickWeb and I’ve never had any problems with this partition missing.
I actually have a friend with the same laptop, (except for the graphics card.) He deleted his recovery partition to install Pinguy. I thought this was pretty reckless, but he has recovery CDs to use in case his computer needs a wipe.
To prep the hard drive for install, I first ran a live CD of Ubuntu, opened up GParted, and deleted HP Tools. Next I resized the Primary Windows partition, making it a bit smaller, leaving myself some unallocated space to put Ubuntu in. (I only left about 20 gigs for Ubuntu)
Then I could install Ubuntu in the unallocated space.
Pithy instructions:
- Open Ubuntu using a live CD
- Open up GParted
- Delete HP Tools partition
- Shrink Windows partition
- Install Ubuntu in the remaining unallocated space.
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