Partitioning For Dual Boot With Windows 10

Hi All,

Trying to install Leap 15.2 in dual boot with Windows 10 on my 2014 Dell Inspiron Laptop. It only support BIOS and not any of the latest EF’s. After installing Windows 10, during install I select installing Grub2 in MBR. But After rebooting I find that the Windows is not booting.
Does Window need some unformated space before its primary partition where ‘C:\’ drive is loaded? If so, how much space should be left?

Guidance on these issues will be most welcome.

Thanks & Regards,

RSP2

Hi
I normally change the grub location to either the extended partition or /boot and let windows have the mbr.

I’m pretty sure that any 2014 computer already supported EFI booting.

Not really a solution, but: I started to use Win 10 as a VM on a TW (with coreboot :smiley: ), will evaluate deeper in the future, but seems to work just fine.

No dual boot, no reboot if you need win 10.

Just an idea what might have happened: Windows : The UEFI is configured to support both legacy boot and UEFI boot mode. Windows was installed in legacy BIOS mode and therefore the disk is partitioned with MBR partitioning. However , OpenSuse and GRUB was installed in UEFI mode. When using GRUB the Systen is in UEFI mode. But Windows can’t start in UEFI mode on a MBR partitioned bootdisk. That’s not supported by the Windows bootloader.
Could you show us the output of fdisk -l or parted -l ? To decide if the theory above might be true

Hi All,

Thanks for all your replies. I am not familiar with EFI and hence I did what I did. The output from the command fdisk -l is given below:

rsp@dell-linux:~> sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password for root: 
Disk /dev/sda: 931.5 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
Disk model: ST1000LM024 HN-M
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x000cc64e

Device     Boot      Start        End    Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *          2048  246216703  246214656 117.4G  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3        246216704  444264447  198047744  94.4G 83 Linux
/dev/sda4        444264448 1953523711 1509259264 719.7G  5 Extended
/dev/sda5        444266496  761935871  317669376 151.5G  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda6        761937920 1634691071  872753152 416.2G 83 Linux
/dev/sda7       1880854528 1953523711   72669184  34.7G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda8       1634693120 1880852479  246159360 117.4G 83 Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order.


rsp@dell-linux:~> 

During installation, Grub2 was selected to be installed on MBR. On ‘/dev/sda8’, KDE Desktop is installed and ‘/dev/sda6’ is mounted as /home.

Thanks and Regards,

RSP2

Then you are not using UEFI. If you were using UEFI, the disk label type would show as GPT. You are using the older partitioning.

Linux can actually use either form of partitioning. And, depending on your BIOS, it might be possible to use UEFI with either type of partitioning. However the UEFI specifications do require GPT partitioning.

Windows is a lot fussier. If you use GPT partitioning, Windows will only boot with UEFI. If you use DOS partitioning, Windows will only boot with legacy booting.

I guess I should mention that there is also hybrid partitioning. It is really GPT, but fudged enough that Windows thinks it is DOS partitioning. It is not recommended, but can work to fool Windows. (I have never tried using that).

In any case, it is highly likely that you are not using UEFI, so that installing Grub2 to the MBR is reasonable.

I’m not sure where that leaves you. I don’t use Windows 10 here. But I recall hearing that when some people upgraded to Windows 10, it created a new partition. And since there can be only 4 primary partitions with DOS partitioning, that left one partition without a partition table entry and broke linux. I don’t know whether Win10 really needs that extra partition, or it is just a place to save stuff.

1 Like

Hi Nrickert,

Thanks for the reply. Yes, When I had purchased this computer in 2014, it had preloaded Windows 10 and it lasted for so many years because I do not use it often. It did have a small partition before ‘C:’ Drive. But at this stage I thought it proper to install the upgrade which was downloaded and installed but after rebooting, it did not work. Then I reinstalled Windows 7. It was working till I installed Leap 15.2. During that partitioning I removed that small Windows partition. Then, Windows 7 also did not work.I suppose that small partition was required by Windows.
I am considering to re-create a small ntfs partition before Windows partition. It will involve my total re-installation of Leap 15.2 also.

Thanks and Regards,

RSP2

Hi Malcolm,

Malcolm wrote on Apr 24:

I normally change the grub location to either the extended partition or /boot and let windows have the mbr.

Thanks for your reply. If Grub2 is written to Extended partition, will the MBR boot Windows and Leap, both of which are loaded on Primary partitions?

Regards,

RSP2

Hi
It should do, what is the exact model DELL, seems unusual not UEFI ready…

If your re-installing then I would re-partition as appropriate.

Hi Malcolm,

This is Dell Inspiron 3540, bought in 2014.
What partitions would you suggest? Only partition I need to keep intact is /home which is /dev/sda6; even though its backup is taken on an external disk.

Regards,

RSP2

Hi
Page 40 - Boot Options refers to UEFI, can you confirm?

Best option would be to confirm your backup is good and start from fresh…

Hi Malcolm,

Should I change to UEFI? But I am not very familiar with it.
I feel comfortable with the DOS boot and prefer to carry on with thatonly unless you feel otherwise.

Regards,

RSP2

Hi
Will make life far more easy for windows/openSUSE along with one partition for both operating systems to boot from etc…

Means a complete install, change the disk type etc, windows creates it’s own partition on an update etc…

This is my Dual boot laptop, no issues with winX after a couple of update installs (I prefer to run a full update after a release of winX and keep files/settings)


lsblk
NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 111.8G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0   260M  0 part /boot/efi
├─sda2   8:2    0    16M  0 part 
├─sda3   8:3    0    25G  0 part /
├─sda4   8:4    0    15G  0 part /data
├─sda5   8:5    0   1.5G  0 part [SWAP]
├─sda6   8:6    0  69.4G  0 part 
└─sda7   8:7    0   620M  0 part 

 parted -l
Model: ATA OCZ-VERTEX460A (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 120GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    File system     Name                  Flags
 1      1049kB  274MB   273MB   fat16           EFI System            boot, esp
 2      274MB   290MB   16.8MB                  Microsoft reserved    msftres
 3      290MB   27.1GB  26.8GB  btrfs           Linux filesystem
 4      27.1GB  43.2GB  16.1GB  xfs             Linux filesystem
 5      43.2GB  44.9GB  1611MB  linux-swap(v1)  Linux swap            swap
 6      44.9GB  119GB   74.5GB  ntfs            Microsoft basic data  msftdata
 7      119GB   120GB   650MB   ntfs                                  hidden, diag

I seem to remember that, back in 2014, Dell was selling systems where the BIOS supported UEFI, but which were configured for MBR booting. I think they came with Windows 7, which some people wanted to avoid Windows 8.

To the OP: If you want to go with UEFI, then you will probably need to reinstall Windows to get it to work. But perhaps you need to reinstall Windows anyway. You would have to decide that.

Hi Malcolm and Nickert,

Thanks a lot for your replies. Yes, as pointed ut by Malcolm also Dell does include UEFI as well. But I will have to get familiar with it before I venture into it. I wanted to avoid that ‘learning curve’ for want of time. But I suppose there is no escaping from it. Yes, reinstall I have to and that is why my original question.
Shall delve into it and shall come back after I have finished with reinstall.

Thanks & Regards,

RSP2

When I bought new hardware in 2014 I continued with traditional bios and postponed switch to uefi until 2018. Based on 3 years of experience with uefi I now know that I should have switched already in 2014.

Latitude 3540 or Precision 3540? No Inspiron.
Update BIOS.

Hi All,

Thanks for all your reactions. I have downloaded the BIOS and shall be updating once windows 7 is reinstalled.
I have also backed up my ‘/home’ on an external drive. I shall be re-partitioning the HDD and install windows first and the Leap-15.2 with Gnome Desktop.
Shall come back after it is done.

Regards,

RSP2

Hi
Upgrade to winX? The iso is a free download…