2012/9/19 Robbie Smith <zoqaeski@xxxxxxxxx>: > On 19/09/12 07:02, Guus Snijders wrote: >> >> 2012/9/18 Robbie Smith <zoqaeski@xxxxxxxxx>: >>> >>> Hi everyone >>> >>> TL;DR: I've just bought a new HP Pavilion g6-2103ax, and I'm having >>> difficulties trying to figure out how I can dual-boot it with Windows 7 >>> (which was preinstalled). >>> >>> Windows *still* defaults to using MBR partitions, and even though the >>> system >>> is UEFI, HP have used some trickery somewhere to make it boot from BIOS. >>> To >>> make matters worse, the disk table already has four partitions: >>> >>> SYSTEM: 199 MB NTFS >>> Windows C drive: ~ 450 GB NTFS >>> HP Recovery partition: 18.5 GB NTFS >>> HP_TOOLS: 99 MB FAT32 >> >> [...] >> >> Hmm, i'd guess that the recovery partition is bootable, so it's best >> not to modify it too much. The HP_Tools partition is probably just a >> data partition (and not a very interesting one, but ymmv). >> First of; do you have (or can you create) a recovery disk in case all >> goes wrong? >> [moving and deleting partitions] >> >> I'm not sure where the bootloader fits in best in the scenario, but >> that shouldn't be too hard. [...] > I can delete the recovery partition, as I've got the "recovery" (AKA factory > reset) disks from HP under warranty. The HP_TOOLS partition is at the end of > the disk, so in theory I can't add an extended partition before it, as > extended partitions are meant to be the last in the table. Although on this > Samsung netbook I've got an extended partition as the third (marked with *) > of four primaries, so it seems to work: [...] > Using that as a guide I could set up the new laptop in a similar way. Indeed. In fact an extended partition is just a "special" primary partition. In theory a single (MBR) harddisk could just as easily have 4 extended partitions. > It's a shame HP and Microsoft made it so difficult, and after this little > episode I'm beginning to suspect that the real reason Microsoft is pushing > Secure Boot is because UEFI+GPT makes it much easier to install multiple > operating systems on a machine without conflicts, but Secure Boot will > require an authorised and signed key, and guess who will control the key > distribution… I'm still not entirely sure what the real benefits of GPT are, but that's another discussion. That they made a it a bit more difficult; no argument there. I guess they assume users never touch the partition table anyway. As for secure boot: Redhead/Fedora were working (or perhaps already having) a secure bootloader. It would't be too hard to install that and use it to boot ArchLinux. ;) mvg, Guus
