alexseanchai: Katsuki Yuuri wearing a blue jacket and his glasses and holding a poodle, in front of the asexual pride flag with a rainbow heart inset. (Default)
let me hear your voice tonight ([personal profile] alexseanchai) wrote in [community profile] linux4all2010-12-09 12:16 am

Trying to install Ubuntu alongside Windows XP

I've got an 80GB hard drive on this machine. One partition's Windows, one is Linux swap space left from before I reinstalled Windows, one is mostly just there, and I want to install Ubuntu on the fourth. Trouble is, every time I try, my choices are install on the whole disk and install on the whole disk. Except for the time I tried with a flash drive in; I now have a 16GB flash drive with a 10GB partition Windows recognizes and a 6GB partition from which I can boot Ubuntu.

I don't want to install on the whole 80GB disk. There's a reason I reinstalled Windows. I also don't want to boot from a USB anything, because every time I try to boot Ubuntu I have to glare at the 'This is not a bootable disk' message until I remember I need to disconnect the external hard drive before the computer thinks to check the flash drive.

What do I do?
sraun: portrait (Default)

[personal profile] sraun 2010-12-09 06:37 am (UTC)(link)
I suspect you need to use the expert install option, which will give you more control over what partitions are created and used. I hope that's enough of a hint - this is one of those things I can just do, and can never remember exactly how it works until I'm looking at it. It should drop you into a partition editor - when you're there, help or h should get you a list of commands.

Does that help?