LiveCD Installer Trying to Delete EISA Partition

[rks171]

Nevermind that last post - I believe I figured out how to mount the windows and backup files partitions. So, I started installing and came up with error: -1014. Apparently, the old Linux partitions couldn't be deleted. So I went ahead and deleted them by hand in the terminal and rebooted the machine. I started installing again after setting up the partition table (note that the linux partitions were now gone - only the EISA and windows partitions remained). This time I got error -3008 and it says unable to mount 16.1 GB media. Now I'm at a loss. Please see the screenshot of the errors I've encountered.


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I ran fdisk -l right after receiving this error and here's what I got.



Note that sdb3 through sdb7 were not there before I started the install.

Edit: I'd like to add that, feeling curious why this install was so screwed up, I went ahead and installed OpenSUSE 11.1 on my home computer last night. The whole process, from start to finish, took about 1 hour with no problems. I didn't have to mess with creating my own partition table - YaST offered to shrink my two existing windows partitions to make room for SUSE. However, I went into create partition setup, selected my second hardrive, and selected use entire drive. I didn't get any errors saying the selection is invalid, like I do on my office computer. Installation went off without a hitch. So I'm aware that it can work easily, but I can't figure out what the difference is between my office and home computer that's causing these problems. Perhaps the EISA partition? Perhaps because my office machine has a SATA HDD while my home machine has an IDE HDD?

[caf4926]

Originally Posted by rks171

Okay, thanks, I'll try that. However, is it necessary for me to 'mount' the partitions containing windows and my backed up files so that I could access them in SUSE? If so, how would I do this?

You don't have to mount them. But I would.

In the partitioner when you setup linux partitions /, /home, swap
Select your windows installation partition and by default it sould be set as 'Do Not Format', in the mount point drop box you have to manually type it in, you can call it anything but it must start with /
eg: /WIN_XP
or
/Evil_Empire

That's it.

We may have to tweak a file later so you can write to it

[rks171]

Okay, so here's an update on my situation.

From what I could deduce from that error, it seemed like the installer was trying to mount devices before they were formatted. So I used

su --> fdisk /dev/sdb --> n

to create an extended partition. Then I created 3 logical partitions after that, setting the sizes to 15 GB, 8 GB, and the rest of the disk space for the last one. Then I wrote the partition table and exited fdisk typing the 'w' command. I formated the 15 GB and last partition using the command:

mkfs.ext3 /dev/sdb#

where # was 5 and 7 for my two partitions. Then I formatted /dev/sdb6 as swap space using:

mkswap /dev/sdb6

After this, I entered the installer and selected 'create partition table'. I didn't delete or create any new partitions this time. I only mounted the ones I created in the terminal with /, swap, and /home. Entered the rest of my info and hit install (btw, I selected MBR for the location to boot GRUB from). Install went like a charm with no errors. I reset, but windows xp started right up. GRUB is a no show. How do I get GRUB to come up?

As a side note, I forgot to mount my windows partition and backup files partition.

[rks171]

Okay, nevermind once again, I figured out the problem. GRUB was installed to the MBR of my other hard drive instead of the one with the operating systems on it (sda instead of sdb). If I switch the boot priority, GRUB appears. I'll look into moving GRUB to my primary hard drive.

Thanks for all your help in resolving this matter.

[caf4926]

Crumbs what a do you had. Well done in working your way thru that and thanks for keeping us informed.