Installation Failed (Windows 10 on main drive, Leap on second drive)

Hey everyone,

after quite a lot of failed installation attempts I’d really appreciate your help. I’m quite new to Linux, so I’m sorry if I missed something generally known.

My Situation:

  • My computer has a 128 GB SSD with a Windows 10 installation and a 1 TB HDD drive
  • Via Windows System Control I formatted the 1 TB drive using GPT and reduced the size of the used partition to approx. 750 GB
  • That leaves 250 GB of free drive space for LEAP
  • I deactivated “Fast Boot” of Windows 10 and set the boot priority to the HDD

What I tried:

  • Install LEAP via USB stick

Conspicuous:

  • The LEAP installer suggests using the entire HDD drive for the 4 Linux partitions
  • in the expert partitioner menu all Windows partitions on the SSD are listed, but not the windows partition on the HDD
    ==> as far as I understand does LEAP not recognize the Windows partition on the HDD

My Problem:
-
I always get the following error message:

YaST2
Failure occured during the following action:
Setting disk label of /dev/sdb to GPT
DISK_CREATE_PARTITION_PARTED_FAILED
System error code was -1007
/usr/sbin/parted -s --align=optimal 'dev/sdbÄ unit cyl mkpart primary fat32 0 19:
Error: /dev/sdb: unrecognised disk label

During my first attempts, where the four Linux partitions had required more than 250 GB of disc space (my mistake) I had got another error message:

YaST2
Failure occurred during the following action:
Setting disk label of /dev/sdb to GPT
DISK_PARTITION_NOT_FOUND
System error code was: -1008
Continue despite the error?

I didn’t dare to continue without knowledge of the consequences. So I aborted the installation each time and tried again with slightly different settings - but no success.

Can you help me? Thank you very much in advance.

Edit:
sdb is the HDD
sda is the SDD

How is windows installed on the SSD? did you use EFI or legacy? Mixing boot modes is trouble with a Capital T.

I’m sorry, but I guess I just don’t know the answer. How can I find out?
At least in Boot or UEFI menu (how do you call it?) the setting is “EFI and legacy”.

By the way: I just found out that my latest installation attempt deleted the Windows partition on the HDD. Fortunately there was no data on the drive (at the utmost from Windows). So I created the Windows partition again and ran a new LEAP installation attempt.
==> Linux now could detect the Windows partition and suggested to use the free space on the drive. I accepted the proposal and got back to where I began - with error 1008 (see above).

Well did you have legacy on that drive then change to GPT? that can leave the old legacy tables and confuse programs since they see both legacy and GPT tables. If this drive was changed from MSDOS format to GPT then you probably should wipe the first track and repartition. Sorry no idea how to do that in Windows it is easy in Linux

http://askubuntu.com/questions/211477/how-to-remove-gpt-from-hdd

FOR how installed.: From Windows I don’t know since it hides partitions that are not Windows. If you do not have a small FAT formatted partition on the boot drive (the SSD I assume) then it is a legacy boot. That partition is the EFI boot partition

If this is a legacy MBR boot I recommend you reserves a small 500 meg partition on the boot drive and instruct the installer to use it for /boot formatted ext4. You can then put root and home and swap on the second drive. You will want to boot the installer in legacy

Note that since you do not have a simple set up you must take control and tell the installer exactly what to do since it can not read your mind. It will present a scheme before actually making changes pay close attention and be completely sure it is what you want before you proceed. If you do not understand something ask here. Doing random stuff can lead to data lose :open_mouth:

No (afaik). The HDD drive was brand-new when I first formatted it in Windows with GPT. I never chose a different setting.

According to the “Expert Partitioner” of the LEAP installation the SSD has three partitions of NTFS “FS Type”. Two of them are of the type “HPFS/NFS” with 100 MiB and 111.25 GiB. The third one is of type “unknown”.
==> So I’ve got Windows installed in legacy boot?
The Linux installer wants to create a partition on the HDD of “Type” EFI boot and “FS Type” FAT.

So you recommend modifications of the SSD partitions? I don’t like that idea, because in many threads and articles on the internet I have read that this could corrupt the Windows installation and will make major updates of Windows impossible.

My plan would have been to boot from the HDD and redirect to the SSD in case that Windows is chosen in the “select operating system to execute” menu.

I fear I won’t be able to do that without step-by-step instructions.

Since I already spent hours and hours on the LEAP installation it might be best to buy a third drive exclusively for Linux. Or would that still cause problems?

By the way: In order to to eliminate all possible sources of errors I wanted to download the .iso of LEAP again. But following the instructions on openSUSE Leap - Get openSUSE with Metalink and DownThemAll! add-on in Firefox the download stopped after a few seconds stating that the SHA256 Hash would not match.
My current installer on the USB device I got from a friend and I don’t know if he checked the hash.

OK you booted in EFI mode if it want to to make an EFI boot partition. Note that a /boot partition is NOT the same as a EFI boot partition. Different animals :wink:

Putting a /boot partition on the boot drive would be normal. If Windows is installed in legacy mode then mixing modes is just going to complicate things. The problem in the past and using legacy is the if you install Grub to the MBR then Windows will come by and change it sometimes making life difficult.If you use generic or windows code in the MBR then Windows may change the boot flag but that is easy to fix. To dual boot you want to boot to Linux then have the option to chain to Windows in the boot menu. So the boot code must be on the boot drive or the BIOS will not find it. If one OS is legacy boot and the other EFI boot you can’t chain between them.

If you made SDB the boot drive and installed in EFI mode and Windows is installed as legacy mode you would not be able to boot to Windows from the grub menu.

It is probable but not certain that the drive came from the manufacturer with MSDOS partitioning. So if you then out GPT on top then you do have two partition tables the older MSDOS and the newer GPT and that make thing difficult. In Linux this is not a huge problem but I have no idea how to correct form Windows.

  1. free up about 500 meg on the boot drive
  2. boot installer in legacy
  3. tell installer to make a partition on the boot drive formatted EXT4 and mounted as /boot using about 500 meg
  4. tell installer to make about 24 gig partition on SDB formatted EXT4 and mounted as /root
  5. tell the installer to make a partition about the size of the memory ons SDB and formate and mount it as swap
  6. tell the installer to make a partition the rest of the SDB drive formatted ext4 and mount as /home
  7. tell the install to put generic code in the mbr of SDA and put grub on the /boot partition on SDA

That will give you a dual bootable system with your set up

If you were will to completely re do it correctly I’d say wipe it all and at least clear the first track on SDB and install it all in EFI mode using GPT partitioned drives. All and all much simpler

OK you booted in EFI mode if it want to to make an EFI boot partition. Note that a /boot partition is NOT the same as a EFI boot partition. Different animals :wink:

Putting a /boot partition on the boot drive would be normal. If Windows is installed in legacy mode then mixing modes is just going to complicate things. The problem in the past and using legacy is the if you install Grub to the MBR then Windows will come by and change it sometimes making life difficult.If you use generic or windows code in the MBR then Windows may change the boot flag but that is easy to fix. To dual boot you want to boot to Linux then have the option to chain to Windows in the boot menu. So the boot code must be on the boot drive or the BIOS will not find it. If one OS is legacy boot and the other EFI boot you can’t chain between them.

If you made SDB the boot drive and installed in EFI mode and Windows is installed as legacy mode you would not be able to boot to Windows from the grub menu.

It is probable but not certain that the drive came from the manufacturer with MSDOS partitioning. So if you then out GPT on top then you do have two partition tables the older MSDOS and the newer GPT and that make thing difficult. In Linux this is not a huge problem but I have no idea how to correct form Windows.

  1. free up about 500 meg on the boot drive
  2. boot installer in legacy
  3. tell installer to make a partition on the boot drive formatted EXT4 and mounted as /boot using about 500 meg
  4. tell installer to make about 24 gig partition on SDB formatted EXT4 and mounted as /root
  5. tell the installer to make a partition about the size of the memory ons SDB and formate and mount it as swap
  6. tell the installer to make a partition the rest of the SDB drive formatted ext4 and mount as /home
  7. tell the install to put generic code in the mbr of SDA and put grub on the /boot partition on SDA

That will give you a dual bootable system with your set up

If you were will to completely re do it correctly I’d say wipe it all and at least clear the first track on SDB and install it all in EFI mode using GPT partitioned drives. All and all much simpler

Also be sure Windows is not using Dynamic disk which is their proprietary version of LVM. Linux can not deal with it because of MS’s secret sauce

Thank you very much for your help. Unfortunately I ran out of time for this year. I’ll deal with the problem in one or two weeks again. Before I do anything I’ll read something about the difference between legacy and EFI boot. Just now I couldn’t follow even your step-by-step instructions :smiley:

If you were will to completely re do it correctly I’d say wipe it all and at least clear the first track on SDB and install it all in EFI mode using GPT partitioned drives. All and all much simpler

I guess starting all over would be the best approach. Unfortunately I don’t understand your suggestions.

What do you mean by “wipe it all”?

How do you want me to clear “the first track” of SDB? So far I again formatted the drive in Windows with GPT and put a new 750 GB partition for Windows on it. Do you suggest to leave the complete SDB empty, install linux and then use the remainig disk space to create a new Windows partition? Do I understand correctly that with “first track” on sdb you refer to the Windows partition?

How do I choose to “install it all in EFI”? Disable legacy boot in the BOOT menu?

I’m sorry for all these questions. It’s just all new to me.

Wipe it all is to write zero into at least the first track this will destroy any partition tables and allow one to start over totally fresh. If you have both DOS and GPT partitions tables things can become confused. and since they live at different locations you can have both.

I hope I am doing that by using the autonuke feature from DBAN run from a USB Stick (SDD with Windows disconnected). That will take more than 7 hours, though. So I’ll report my latest experience in the meantime.

My current approach is to disconnect the SDD and install openSUSE stand-alone on the HDD, adding a boot manager configuration after the installation. However that still doesn’t work. Neither with the HDD being GPT-formatted by Windows nor with all HDD partitions being deleted by a failed installation attempt.
My next idea was to create a new partition table using the openSUSE installer. I did that and created the following partitions (almost default-values suggested from the installer):

150 MiB FAT \efi\boot
16 GiB swap \swap
40 GiB Btrfs |
175 GiB XFS \home

Unfortunately that only produced the following error message:

Some subvolumes of the root filesystem are shadowed by mount points of other filesystem. This could lead to problems. Really use this setup? -YES / NO

I guess the problem is that the root partition has two boot-related subvolumes? Well, they’re default-set and I don’t want to change anything without knowing what I’m doing.

Any idea about that?

==> I’m not able to install openSUSE on the HDD at all so far (even without dual boot)

By the way: Windows seems to be installed in legacy mode. Allowing “UEFI” mode only in BIOS prevents Windows from starting up.

You don’t need to nuke the entire drive just the first track that is where both GPT and DOS partition tables live.

My advise give free space and let the installer make the partitions.

Take full control (expert mode) and be sure that all is what you intend. If you do a new install with existing partitions the installer wants to add more partitions. Pay attention to the partition schema page and be absolutely sure it is what you want before proceeding

This is the entire process that I did to create my multi boot system using Windows 10 and openSuse 42.1 Leap using EFI system partition.
Hardware:

  • Laptop Asus A55VD
  • Processors: 8 Intel Core i7-3610QM CPU @ 2.30GHz
  • Ram: 6 GiB
  • HDD: 500 GiB
    Tools:
  • USB stick with Windows 10
  • USB stick with openSuse 42.1 Leap

I want to describe the complete process for anyone with dubts.
First clean the entire HDD for change from MBR to GPT. After that boot USB UEFI option and install Windows 10 Pro.
In Windows 10 partition assistant first delete every partition. Then make first partion with desire size, and automatically ask for creation of other partiotions that the SO Windows need, then press Accept.
After that install continue the installation in created partition for the SO.
When finish complete Windows install preceed to install openSuse 42.1.
Boot with and openSuse USB stick in UEFI mode too and follow the different steps. When reach the partition options, make a custom partition, in my case I create one partition for “/” (btrfs file system),
one for “/home” (xfs file system) and one for “swap”, each one choose the prefered size and file system for the different partitions. After that follow the steps as default and before finish the installation
shows a window error about grub2 bootloader installation; don’t care about that and continue until finish.
Now you should have the two operating systems installed but only will boot Windows 10 directly without show boot options.

After that I proceed to install grub2 in EFI partition, replacing the info that Windows put there.
Boot again in EFI mode with the USB with opensuse 42.1 Installation and choose the option Rescue; the put as login “root” with blank password.
Then you must know the information about your partition table.

parted -l

or

fdisk -l

Then use the follow commands step by step (take care don’t copy the evey command adyacent explantion):

mount /dev/sda2 /mnt (sda5 is my root partition)

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot/efi (sda2 is my efi partition)

for i in /dev /dev/pts /proc /sys; do sudo mount -B $i /mnt$i; done

modprobe efivars (make sure this is loaded)

Enter chroot mode:

chroot /mnt

grub2-install --target=x86_64-efi

shim-install (only needed for secure-boot)

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg (write configuration to grub.cfg)

Then Ctrl+D for out chroot and umount every mounted resource:

for i in /sys /proc /dev/pts /dev; do sudo umount /mnt$i; done

umount /mnt/boot/efi #please do this. corrupted efi partitions are not nice

umount /mnt

After that reboot the system:

reboot

Now the grub is installed and working perfectly except that don’t appear the entry for Windows 10 in the grub. Don’t be scared.
Start openSuse OS and log in.
After that we will recover the Windows 10 entry in “/boot/grub2/grub.cfg” file.
Then execute the script provided by openSuse for find other operating systems.

./etc/grub.d/30_os-prober

In my case it returned the following lines

menuentry ‘Windows Boot Manager (on /dev/sda2)’ --class windows --class os $menuentry_id_option ‘osprober-efi-42F6-0AEC’ {
insmod part_gpt
insmod fat
set root=‘hd0,gpt2’
if x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root --hint-bios=hd0,gpt2 --hint-efi=hd0,gpt2 --hint-baremetal=ahci0,gpt2 42F6-0AEC
else
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 42F6-0AEC
fi
chainloader /efi/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
}

You can change the name ‘Windows Boot Manager (on /dev/sda2)’ by your prefered name for your windows partition.
Then put the returned text in “/boot/grub2/grub.cfg” file, after submenu entry

submenu ‘Advanced options for openSUSE Leap 42.1’ … {

}

Save changes and reboot for test. You should see the grub2 menu with all entries.

Hope this help.

Well, I know that nuking the whole drive is some kind of overkill. The problem is this: Neither with Windows nor with openSUSE I could create a partitioning table that solved the problem. Several times I deleted all partitions on the HDD and created a new partitioning table. - It just didn’t help.
As I said - I’m not able to install openSUSE on the HDD even if ignoring Windows completely (disconnect SSD and delete Windows partition on HDD). I wanted to comply with your suggestions to “wipe the disk clean” and therefore chose the nuke. What would have been the better/faster solution?

I have tried that so many times already… But I’ll try again. And this time I won’t partition the drive with Windows, but leave the partitioning to the openSUSE installer. I’ll leave some space for another Windows (data) partition and hope that will work. Does that sound good?
If I can’t solve the problem tomorrow I’ll buy another drive - so openSUSE has the entire drive for itself. But as I said before - even that won’t work with my current HDD at the moment. Let’s wait and see if the nuke had any effect.

====================================

@LCGB:
Thank you for your experience. Just now I don’t know what to learn from it, though. I’ve got different drives for the two operating systems and the only installation media I got from Windows is a Windows 7 Pro installation disk (I did an upgrade to Win 10). Maybe I can use your advice later.

Problem is having two different type of partition tables ie GPT and DOS this is what confuses things in that some software may see the drive as GPT and other software sees it as DOS. Re doing the partitions does not help you must wipe out both partition tables. Both live on the first track

Leave the space unpartitioned. Always be prepared to take full control since the installer can not guess your wants.

try and follow instruction from here

https://tweakhound.com/2014/11/13/dual-boot-opensuse-13-2-and-windows-8-1-uefi/

i had face same problem , it worked for me.

YaST2
Failure occured during the following action:
Setting disk label of /dev/sda to GPT

DISK_CREATE_PARTITION_PARTED_FAILED

System error code was: -1007

/usr/sbin/parted -s --align=optimal ‘dev/sda’ unit cyl mkpart primary fat32 0 19:
Error: /dev/sda: unrecognised disk label

Continue despite the error?

Same error as before. I get the impression that not the dual boot, but installing Linux is source of the problem.

  • Are there HDDs not supporting the GPT format? (My HDD is Western Digital 1 TB WD10EZEX 64MB)

I tried to install openSUSE to the newly wiped HDD (SDD with Windows disconnected, so HDD became sda). It looks to me like the Installer couldn’t know about Windows, but still failed.

This is the output of command “parted /dev/sda print” (in command-line with only HDD connected):

Error: /dev/sda: unrecognised disk label
Model: ATA WDC WD10EZEX-00B (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: unknown
Disk Flags:

There is no partition table you have wiped it you must now create a new one. The installer should do this when it adds a partition. Or you can do it with parted

So how did the install “Fail” Get any error messages???

During installation I entered the console via [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[F5] and tried to change the partition table of the HDD like this:

fdisk /dev/sda
g
w

After the the first command the console told me that sda lacked a partition table and therefore a DOS partition table had to be created.
“g” resulted in a new GPT partition table being prepared
“w” wrote the GPT table to disk and reported success.

But even after rebooting I got the same information regarding the disk label as written in my last post [unrecognized disk label, unknown partition table]. The GPT table was either never created or directly destroyed again.