I’ve been googling this for a while, as well as searching the forums, and most of the dual-boot how-tos assume that you have a standard Windows vista or Windows 7 installation. This is a new HP Probook, ordered for me by the company, with the following:
HP Probook 4535s
Windows 7 Professional
Dual AMD A4-3300 w/Radeon HD Graphics
8G Ram
700GB HD
Radeon HD 6480G
Pretty typical so far as that goes. But … those who’ve used HP laptops know that they’re notorious for having hidden/special partitions for recovery. In fact, all four primary partitions are used on this PC:
(1) Windows boot manager
(2) Windows “proper” (OS/data)
(3) HP Recovery partition
(4) HP Tools partition
Some of these tools are apparently used by the BIOS. I imagine the recovery partition is the usual “blow up Windows and reinstall” thingie.
I’ve already used Parted Magic to resize that big Windows partition (#2) from 600 GB down to 250GB, leaving me a gracious plenty for OpenSuse. Aside from the usual chkdsk run when Windows restarted, everything seems to be fine. But how do I partition this thing when I install OpenSuse? Has anyone else run across this? Will HP’s tools, security and management stuff complain that I’ve moved some of “their” partitions into extended? That’s the only way I can possibly install another OS.
By the way … I found out after this had been ordered that these laptops are available with Suse Enterprise Desktop pre-installed. TigerDirect (which is where we got these) didn’t mention that, or I would have ordered it that way.
I’m not sure, to be honest. I know that Parted Magic is able to see everything just fine, and calls it three primary NTFS partitions, and one FAT32 partition.
Thanks. I obviously don’t have GPT, because I got a very normal looking list of partition table entries when I ran fdisk.
I solved my problem by simply backing up the extra HP TOOLS partition. I then deleted it and allowed the Opensuse installer to use the free space. It works. (Assuming I can get the video happy, anyway … that’s for another thread!)
> I solved my problem by simply backing up the extra HP TOOLS partition.
> I then deleted it and allowed the Opensuse installer to use the free
> space. It works. (Assuming I can get the video happy, anyway … that’s
> for another thread!)
I was going to say that one of the procedures I use with these things is
image that recovery partition (a bootable partition directly from the bios,
which wipes the disk completely with a new windows system), and I also
image the MBR. With these two backups the original status is recoverable.
To protect for the case when Windows is accidentally destroyed (virus or
whatever), I also image the smaller Windows install that results after
installing Linux.
The HP tools partition I don’t know what contains. The units I have used
didn’t have it.
I don’t understand why HP, which also sells Linux installed computers,
doesn’t do a friendly partitioning with an extended partition. Using all
primaries is absurd :-/
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
That’s essentially what I did. Thank the Lord for Parted Magic. I just copied the partition to a USB drive. There is hidden data in that thing, so you do indeed want to copy the partition as a whole, and NOT just do a cut and paste in a file manager.
I don’t understand why HP, which also sells Linux installed computers,
doesn’t do a friendly partitioning with an extended partition. Using all
primaries is absurd :-/
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
I certainly agree. Like I said, I wish I’d known that this laptop was available with Suse Enterprise Desktop already installed.
> I certainly agree. Like I said, I wish I’d known that this laptop was
> available with Suse Enterprise Desktop already installed.
Mine I bought on a general department store. On one side TVs and washing
machines, on other clothes and groceries. So asking for Linux was out of
the question
I got it cheap and I’m still happy with it. Not flashy, though.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
On Wed, 13 Jun 2012, smpoole7 wrote:
> In fact, all four primary partitions are used on this PC:
>
> (1) Windows boot manager
> (2) Windows “proper” (OS/data)
> (3) HP Recovery partition
> (4) HP Tools partition
Got an HP laptop dv5 last year. Very pissed at this as well, as all room
is already taken.
(1) Windows boot manager
You can kill this partition. What you need to do is to move the windows
boot to the second partition. There exists a windows 7 repair and
recovery cd that does that pretty nicely, but I’m not sure if it’s freely downloadable (or if it ever
has been). HP recovery crapware won’t let you do much in this respect.
(3) HP Recovery
The software allows you to make one (and just one) set of backup cds or
dvds, as an alternative from the HDD recovery. Once done, you may safely
remove that partition. For me, it was a set of 6 DVDs. Yes, SIX DVDs! Given that OEM Windows is a single DVD, that means 5 discs of bloatware. Again, you can also do this with CDs… (reminds me of installing King’s Quest VI with floppies).
NOTE: Don’t do as I did. I formatted the machine, repartitioned to my
liking, and started the crazy DVD restore. It would not take into
account your existing partition table, nor ask you for custom setup. It would
just put back that 600GB Windows partition.
(4) HP tools
No clue what Hp Tools does. I had a backup of it and never heard
issues about it since then.
On 2012-06-15 17:36, p_barill wrote:
> (3) HP Recovery
> The software allows you to make one (and just one) set of backup cds or
> dvds, as an alternative from the HDD recovery. Once done, you may safely
> remove that partition. For me, it was a set of 6 DVDs. Yes, SIX DVDs! Given
> that OEM Windows is a single DVD, that means 5 discs of bloatware. Again,
> you can also do this with CDs… (reminds me of installing King’s Quest VI
> with floppies).
You can simply image this partition. Mine is 11 GiB (used), so that would
be 3 DVDs at most.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
