I have an HP laptop Dv7 with 750 GB hard drive. It’s running Windows 7. I deleted the Recovery and HP Tools partitions and now I have 350+ GB available for Leap. Using the downloaded DVD I’m trying to create a partition of Leap and add the necessary mount points.
However, I get a message that the installation program gparted can only use existing partitions. I’ve tried to run gparted from a rescue disk and I get the same message. I can only use existing partitions and I cannot add, delete or resize partitions on the disk.
One option appears to be to create an additional one or two NTFS partitions and install Leap and (perhaps) a swap disk. The dialog box says I can use Expert Partitioner, but it will wipe out my existing Windows 7 partitions.
I have never encountered this limitation before in using Linux for 19 years. In fact I have a much newer HP Envy laptop that is happily dual booting Windows 10 and openSUSE 13.2.
How can I get this old machine to dual boot? Or is this a bug with Leap 42.1?
I’ve examined all the posts on this forum and there don’t seem to be similar posts. Sorry if this is a similar post.
Hi
Sounds like the system is using legacy boot, therefore fdisk, therefore you must create the free space as type extended not primary…
Yo can do this with the expert partitioner, just rescan the device on the first page of expert partitioner, then go up and select the drive and create the free space as an extended partition. Then you can create your additional partitions.
Possibility 1: Windows is installed with legacy booting, but you booted the opensuse installer to use UEFI booting. So the installer wants to switch to GPT partitioning but cannot due to existing partitions.
Possibility 2: Your disk was, at one time, GPT partitioned. But then it was repartitioned with legacy MBR partitioning. But, unfortunately, some residual traces of the GPT partition table remain.
I’m guessing that the second of those is more likely. The utility “fixparts” (from package “gptfdisk-fixparts”) might be able to fix this. Or maybe not.
You can probably add partitions with plain “fdisk” and then maybe use those for the install.
AFAIK, the DV7 is from 2007 or so, Win Vista32, so definitely MBR BIOS and is very unlikely to have seen any GPT / UEFI in its life.
If originally partitioned like similar HP products, removing Rescue and HPTOOLS should have freed room for two primary partitions, so the problem might be elsewhere…
FYI, I recently installed LEAP on an extended partition in my test laptop of the same vintage without even removing any original partitions.
BTW, gparted on the LEAP DVD? I didn’t see it at all…
I did try to install Windows 10 on the machine at one time. No luck from lack of video card drivers.
Maybe that’s where “some residual traces of the GPT partition table remain.”
I think the message said that the install application was parted, not gparted. Just hard to retain information from a failed install.
I will try fdisk and fixparts.
Possibility 3 - Windows is using dynamic disks (LDM). Tis is usually what causes message about read-only disk partitions.
Posting the disk layout would probably be of benefit, here.
I managed to reformat the disk. In the process I discovered that several DVDs burned from several downloads were corrupted when I used the “Check Media” function. However, during subsequent attempts to install Leap 42.1 or Tumbleweed, the new installation would hang at the logon screen.
I reinstalled Window 7 Ultimate and I’ll try to debug why the install is failing on this older HP dv7 later. Please consider this post complete and thank you all for your suggestions.