Partitioning failure on install

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

I have a colleague whose XP laptop got a nasty bit of BHO malware. After bragging that I could get rid of it, I spent many hours in failure. Basically, it is a browser hijacker that won’t go away. The solutions I find online go back to 2003 and require that I develop an equation to reconcile dark matter with anti-matter. I installed 4 different commercial “solutions” that didn’t work.

Giving up on fixing it, I tried to install 11.4 from a Live-CD. Accepting the suggested partitioning scheme, I was about to stand up, go away, and let opensuse do its thing. Immediately, a gray message box popped up and said it could not partition the disk because of a certain block problem. I tried to set this up as dual boot both to continue access to the windows data and in the hopes I might someday find a cure for the malware. I have 2 options that I have yet to try: a) tell the install disk to take the whole disk and hope it works; or b) use a nuke disk I have to wipe the HD.

My preference is to dual boot. Is there any other option I should try?

#2

Try partitioning with parted magic
Then install

#3

Immediately, a gray message box popped up and said it could not partition the disk because of a certain block problem.

You may want to run a file system check on your NTFS from a windows install or recovery disk.

#4

I ran chkdsk a couple of times including chkdsk /f and it didn’t cure the problems. My colleague was impatient, so I ended up with a nuke & pave. I moved the data into the cloud with Spider Oak except for a 425 MB Outlook file. I burned that to a CD. Now, there is a password problem. The laptop was not password protected, i.e. password was blank. However, it appears that the .pst file is password protected. I did not set a password and don’t understand why it would get one when there was open access to the file in its original form. Any Windows guru have a tip for me?

I ALMOST got them to switch to opensuse. But almost doesn’t count.