Can't choose to install LL besides the existing OSs

[N4RPS]

Hello!

Off-topic, I know, but bear with me.

Having spent two years over in (West) Germany in the mid-80s (Sembach Air Base, near Kaiserslautern), I can DEFINITELY attest to fact that Germany makes some of the world's best beers, gold_finger.

It seems like every little town has its own locally-produced brew, and there's not a bad one in the bunch. Some of them, like Bitburger (Bitburg), St. Pauli Girl (Hamburg), Beck's (Bremen), and others are available in America at specialty stores.

My personal favorite was Parkbrau Pirmanator. It is made in Pirmasens, also near Kaiserslautern. It's only produced in the early autumn, and was the smoothest Doppelbock (12% alcohol) beer one could even imbibe...

73 DE N4RPS
Rob

[Scott]

Hi Jonas. Did you by chance have the option for encrypt home directory set to yes?

[gold_finger]

Well, sorry it didn't work out with LL.  Have no idea what was cause of problem.

Thanks for the beer invite!  If I lived near you, I'd definitely take you up on it.  Surely the beer in Germany is much better than the beer here in US.

Glad you at least had luck installing Mint.  I'll probably run into you on that forum sometime -- I'm pretty active on there and use Mint myself also.

Cheers.

[Jonas]

Ok, I did that and also checked if people discuss other solutions for these kind of errors.
Well, it didn't work out. And I didn't find other solutions for it in the communities.

I quit now trying it with LL. I get to Mint (which I was able to install without fault).

I thank especially you, goldfinger for your support and help.
If you'd live in my area (Chemnitz, GER), I'd invite you for a beer. 
But probably you don't.

Maybe I'm gonna try LL again on my next netbook.

c u

[gold_finger]

Did a search on one of your error messages and found some posts that referenced something I knew about as a problem on another Ubuntu-based distro, but didn't affected others.  There were references of problems caused by a bug in the slideshow portion of the installer that affected multiple distros based on Ubuntu 12.04.  If we're lucky, that is what is causing the problem, because it is easy to solve.  (On the other distro that I knew had the slideshow bug problem, it did not affect everyone -- just certain computers for some reason.)

Boot into live Linux Lite again.  Before starting the installer, remove the slideshow by entering the following command in a terminal:

Code: [Select]

sudo apt-get remove ubiquity-slideshow-ubuntu
Close terminal when done, then go ahead with the installation.  Hopefully that takes care of the problem.

[Jonas]

By the way, the hard disk itself is fine - I did today a disk check and there were no corrupt elements.

[Jonas]

It still doesn't work. 

After I did exactly as you explained, I rebooted, and it hung up:
http://ibin.co/1KjdkMC85xJk
http://ibin.co/1KjdquhcRL6T

On the third try, It worked. I did the installation process and - Hooray! it offers me to install it besides Windows! -
Hung up then. (I think, it just stopped due to errors as I noticed on second try the log terminal - everything else still worked.)

Second try it stopped again and I noticed the tiny 3-line-terminal which provides a log. Here an extract of it:
http://ibin.co/1KjesbdW69Vt
http://ibin.co/1KjezA90RTdW
http://ibin.co/1Kjf620f5zkD

Then, I tried if I could install manjaro besides windows successfully, but there it doesn't offer me the option to install it besides. Then I tried to give him a partition of the free space but in the beginning of installing it said (I translate): "Base-datasystem doesn't exist. Crucial fault (abortion)".

Then, I tried it with Lubuntu and it offered me (as before I posted my problem here) to install it besides Windows. I did and the installation process was without any fault.

Any other ideas?

[gold_finger]

After I did that with fixparts, it told me that 0xEE doesn't start in sector 1 and that it could cause problems.
Can I fix that also?

That is the partition type code for something called a protective MBR (used by GPT disks) and that should be fixed when running fixparts -- but may not register until a reboot.  After reboot disk should be fine.  Go ahead with installation now.

[Jonas]

After I did that with fixparts, it told me that 0xEE doesn't start in sector 1 and that it could cause problems.
Can I fix that also?

[N4RPS]

Hello!

What I'm about to say isn't really all that relevant here. It's just my $.02 worth.

Most netbooks only have one DDR2 RAM slot, meaning a maximum of 2 GB RAM. They usually ship with 1 GB RAM, which is why they shipped with 7 Starter pre-installed.

7 Professional - even 32-bit - just can't run well on 1 GB RAM. Even with 2 GB RAM, you still need a 3-4 GB swap file with 7 Professional to have it perform at its best.

FWIW, I run 8.1 Pro on my 2 GB netbook, and it isn't bad - depending on what I do...

73 DE N4RPS
Rob


 

[gold_finger]

Well, I have no idea how stray GPT data ended up on your disk, but we'll remove it and that should solve the problem.

Note:  The commands below must be entered without any mistakes, so your best bet is to copy them from here and paste them into the terminal rather than trying to type them out.

Another Note:  You can stay logged in here and keep these instructions visible in Firefox as you perform the steps.  While Firefox is open to these instructions you can copy/paste commands shown here into the terminal when you get to those steps.

*** Boot computer with your live Linux Lite DVD/USB.  (Make a note of whether you are using the 32-bit or 64-bit version.  You'll need to know that for a step below.)

*** Get a spare USB stick that you can save files on and keep it handy.

*** Open a terminal and copy/paste the following command into it and hit enter.

Code: [Select]

sudo sfdisk -d /dev/sda > /home/linux/Desktop/parts.txt
*** That made a backup copy of your partition table and put it in a file called parts.txt on the Desktop.

*** Put your USB stick in the computer and copy that parts.txt file to it for safe keeping.


I'm going to walk you through commands for using a utility called fixparts to get rid of the stray GPT partition data.  For reference, this is the site for fixparts and I'm just adapting instructions from there to your particular situation:  http://www.rodsbooks.com/fixparts/.

*** Now, open Firefox web browser and go to this page:  http://sourceforge.net/projects/gptfdisk/files/gptfdisk/0.8.8/fixparts-binaries/.

*** Download and save fixparts_0.8.8-1_i386.deb if you are using 32-bit Linux Lite.

Or

*** Download and save fixparts_0.8.8-1_amd64.deb if you are using 64-bit Linux Lite.

*** Close Firefox.

*** Go to where you saved fixparts file and double-click it.  A program called GDebi Package Installer will then open file and ask if you want to install it.  Tell it to install program and when it finishes you can close GDebi.

*** Now open a terminal again and enter this command to start the fixparts utility:

Code: [Select]

sudo fixparts /dev/sda
Quoted from the fixparts web site:  "...some utilities can be confused by the presence of both MBR and GPT data. Thus, FixParts checks for this condition when it starts. If it finds leftover GPT data, it warns you of this fact and asks you what to do:"

NOTICE: GPT signatures detected on the disk, but no 0xEE protective partition!
The GPT signatures are probably left over from a previous partition table.
Do you want to delete them (if you answer 'Y', this will happen
immediately)? (Y/N):

*** If it asks you to delete GPT signatures, type y for yes and it will immediately delete the stray GPT data.

Then type q to quit the program.  Don't do anything further with the Fixparts program and if for some reason it asks you to save any changes (it shouldn't) -- answer NO.


*** Now, shutdown your live Linux Lite session and remove DVD/USB when done.

*** Boot computer into Windows to make sure it still works. 

*** Assuming it does, use Windows Disk Management utility to shrink the Windows partition if you need to.  (Don't know if you installed Windows to the whole disk or not.)  Don't shrink it so much that it has no room to grow -- leave at least 20GB more room than it's files already have taken up on the drive.

*** When done, shut down Windows and boot up again with your live Linux Lite DVD/USB.

*** You should now be able to perform installation normally.  Choose "Along side Windows" if you want the installer to make the partitions for you.  Choose "Something else" if you want to make the partitions yourself.

[Jonas]

I just read that Win7/32 is able to read and write on GPT partitions but not to boot..

[Jonas]

If I push the insert image button, it asks me to write something...
I upload it via this website:

gpartedA http://ibin.co/1KbJuvTKdEtC
gpartedB: http://ibin.co/1KbKMiI7X406
gpartedB_details: http://ibin.co/1KbKXKRlnzRt
commands_page1: http://ibin.co/1KbKpkXZdh30
commands_page2: http://ibin.co/1KbL6bqXxUWD

Well, the hard disk of this computer is inside of that and was never part of another computer. There was also never a MAC involved. But as you mentioned, one thing to remark is maybe, that it was delivered with Win XP on it, and I upgraded it recently to Win7 Pro (32bit). Then I found out that my netbook got even slower than before and thats the reason why I install Linux now.

By typing in your first given command, It asked me something remarkably (if it has a GPT partition because it pretends to be but doesnt look like - it asked me if so - i have not really a clue and answered 'yes' ). But you see it in the screenshot.

[gold_finger]

Ok, so I made everything new as far as I know and Win7 is also already on.
But there's still no option to install it besides the existing OS.
It sais remarkably, that it there isn't any existig OS yet, and that's why it only shows to wipe the disk before installing (and the "something else" option of course).

When I go to "something else", it shows the partition structure. But there is /dev/sda (no space), then "Free space" (it says the amount of the whole hard disk although Win7 is already on it), and /dev/sdb (also no shown space)

Going on Win7 Partition tool, there are two partions shown.

Any advice on how to go on?

What you described (the installer not seeing that another OS is already installed) can happen sometimes if the hard disk at some point in time was partitioned using GPT partitions instead of MBR partitions.  Sometimes there is stray GPT data present on the disk after you change to using MBR partitions (which is what you had on there from last screenshot).  That can happen if the drive used to be in a MAC computer, or if the drive had been used in a newer computer with UEFI firmware and Windows was installed to GPT partitions at some point in the past.  Not sure if that's what's going on, but it sounds like it.

Boot the computer with your live Linux Lite DVD/USB.

• Open GParted -- Menu -> System -> Partition Drives
• Take screenshot of the hard drive (/dev/sda)
• Hit save and rename screenshot to gpartedA
• If you have another drive, switch to that in upper right corner of GParted
• Repeat screenshot & save procedure for the other drive, rename to gpartedB
• Attach the screenshot(s) to your next post using the button "Insert Image" button (1st on left above smiley faces)
• If can't attach screenshots, upload them here and post the link to them with your post.

.

In addition to screenshots, open a terminal and post back the output from following commands:

Code: [Select]

sudo parted /dev/sda print

Code: [Select]

sudo fdisk -l

Code: [Select]

sudo blkid -c /dev/null

[Jonas]

Ok, so I made everything new as far as I know and Win7 is also already on.
But there's still no option to install it besides the existing OS.
It sais remarkably, that it there isn't any existig OS yet, and that's why it only shows to wipe the disk before installing (and the "something else" option of course).

When I go to "something else", it shows the partition structure. But there is /dev/sda (no space), then "Free space" (it says the amount of the whole hard disk although Win7 is already on it), and /dev/sdb (also no shown space)

Going on Win7 Partition tool, there are two partions shown.

Any advice on how to go on?