On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 6:14 AM, Robbie Smith <zoqaeski@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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
The SYSTEM partition seems to contain the Windows bootloader, or something
along those lines. The HP Recovery partition contains the software
necessary to do a factory reset, and HP_TOOLS contains some UEFI
applications (some system diagnostic things). C drive is Windows.
What I was thinking of doing was shrinking C drive, and deleting the
recovery partition to make space for Arch. But on my first attempt, parted
bricked the table, and whilst I was able to recover it, Windows refused to
boot. I obtained recovery disks to restore it, but they are completely
non-interactive so cannot be used to rescue Windows, only reset to factory
initial state.
Due to the arrangement of the partitions, I don't think creating an
Extended partition will work (they need to be the last one in the table,
don't they?), and while I've read GRUB2 can use /boot in LVM, I'm not sure
whether this will work. Also, I've never used GRUB2 before, and its configs
look formidable compared to Syslinux. Ideally I'd switch to GPT, but
Windows needs to be booted in UEFI mode for this, but I have no idea how to
enable this as there's neither a switch in the BIOS settings, nor settings
in Windows.
Can anyone advise me on how I could overcome these issues? Has anyone had
any experience with new HP g6 models?
On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 6:14 AM, Robbie Smith <zoqaeski@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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
The SYSTEM partition seems to contain the Windows bootloader, or something
along those lines. The HP Recovery partition contains the software
necessary to do a factory reset, and HP_TOOLS contains some UEFI
applications (some system diagnostic things). C drive is Windows.
What I was thinking of doing was shrinking C drive, and deleting the
recovery partition to make space for Arch. But on my first attempt, parted
bricked the table, and whilst I was able to recover it, Windows refused to
boot. I obtained recovery disks to restore it, but they are completely
non-interactive so cannot be used to rescue Windows, only reset to factory
initial state.
Due to the arrangement of the partitions, I don't think creating an
Extended partition will work (they need to be the last one in the table,
don't they?), and while I've read GRUB2 can use /boot in LVM, I'm not sure
whether this will work. Also, I've never used GRUB2 before, and its configs
look formidable compared to Syslinux. Ideally I'd switch to GPT, but
Windows needs to be booted in UEFI mode for this, but I have no idea how to
enable this as there's neither a switch in the BIOS settings, nor settings
in Windows.
Can anyone advise me on how I could overcome these issues? Has anyone had
any experience with new HP g6 models?
