Trying to install Ubuntu alongside Windows XP

[alexseanchai]

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?

Comments

[alexseanchai]

Yeah, but that walkthrough has an 'Install alongside other operating systems' option. I have not got that option. I have erase the whole disk, which is bad, and I have specify partitions manually, and I specify /dev/sda2 as the boot partition and I get "No root file system is defined. Please correct from the partitioning menu." Which I don't know wtf.

[allen]

...Ok, well, that might be because your disk is fully partitioned already (?). I don't know what logic the installer uses to give its choices.

Still, if you can get to the manual partitions part then that's a good start. What you'll probably want to do is to choose that, then select the partition you want to install to (you said you have a swap partition, a 'just there' partition, and a fourth partition that you want to use, right? choose the fourth partition), choose 'Change', and then set its type to ext4 and its Mount Point to '/'. That identifies it as the root partition.

(In this case I'm using the guide at http://netgator.blogspot.com/2010/10/ubuntu-1010-installation-guide-and.html as a reference point. If your installer doesn't look like that, and/or if selecting specify partitions manually doesn't get you to a screen like this, then I'd probably need to know what Ubuntu version and media you're using for your install...)

[alexseanchai]

Ahkay. Let's try that, then.

AND LO AND BEHOLD IT IS WORKING. Thank you!

[sraun]

I'm glad you got more specific help - I followed what [Unknown site tag] told you to do, and went 'yep, that's it!' - but, as I said earlier, I would have had to be looking at the partition editor to be able to do it / describe it.