Sorry, guys. I read all the previous posts but I must not be understanding something, or maybe I’m in the wrong screen because I can’t figure this out.
I am trying to do a dual boot installation of SuSE 11.1 onto a virgin Windows 7 HP computer that has only had the available HP and Windows updates added to the hard drive. Some of the previous posts apparently thought I was trying to install Windows. I am not.
The computer shows Windows C: as having a fraction over 30 GB allocated space, and the Image drive (D:) as having just under 13GB of allocated space.
I defragged the Windows drive C: then inserted the SuSE disk and rebooted to start the install.
I get a screen that offers “Suggested Partitioning” and says:
Shrink windows /dev/sda2 to 115.22 GB
Create extended partition /dev/sda5 2.01 GB
Create root partition /dev/sda6 20.00 GB with ext3
Create partition /dev/sda7 147.86 GB for /home with ext 3
Set mount point of /dev/sda1 to /windows/C
Set mout point of /dev/sda4 to windows/E
Then I click on “Edit Partition Setup” and that’s where I get hopelessly confused.
At this point I see the following:
/dev/sda 298.08 GB
/dev/sda1 100MB NTFS System /windows/C
/dev/sda2 115.22 GB NTFS HP /windows/D
/dev/sda3 169.87 GB extended
/dev/sda4 12.91 GB NTFS factory image /windows/E
/dev/sda5 2.01 GB swap
/dev/sda6 20.00 GB native ext 3 /
/dev/sda7 147.86 GB native ext 3 /home
My first confusion is seeing the main windows drive showing up as “D” rather than “C.” Is that a problem or simply a labeling convention?
And what is the 100MB showing up as “C?” I saw a reference to the 100MB in a previous post but I don’t understand its significance (or lack thereof).
Next, the factory image that shows up as “D” when using Windows 7 shows up here as “E.” Another labeling convention or is this a problem?
If those labeling issues are nothing to worry about then I would like to shrink the Windows partition as much as possible since I’m not going to be saving much of anything to the C: drive. So I’m thinking of taking it down to, say, 40GB. Does that seem reasonable?
So to do that I clicked on the line that says:
/dev/sda2 115.22 GB NTFS HP /windows/D
and used the control arrows to run it down from 115.22 to 40 GB. I clicked “accept” and the screen refreshed to show:
/dev/sda2 40.00 GB NTFS HP /windows/D
So I thought I was making progress. But now I could not figure out how to take that roughly 75GB I had removed from Windows and add it to my Linux /home partition. How do I increase the /dev/sda7 partition from 147.86 GB to 222 GB?
Geez, is this an incredibly simple problem to which I’m just not seeing the solution? Am I trying to use the wrong editing screen to take from Windows and give to SuSE?
Wife and I are both stumped.
Your explicit guidance is greatly appreciated so I don’t screw up and actually have to install Windows! 
Thx.
socref