Windows Cannot install on Partition 3 :( help...


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Thread: Windows Cannot install on Partition 3 :( help...

  1. #1
    Join Date
    May 2009
    Posts
    1

    Windows Cannot install on Partition 3 :( help...

    i'm currently running Fedora 10 on a single drive 640GB P43.2 GHz rig... now here's the partitions i created while installing Fedora a few months back

    Western Digital 640GB
    Code:
    Partition -- Size -- Lable/Mount
    Partition1-- 20GB -- / 
    Partition2 -- 440GB -- LVM
       LVM1 -- 200GB -- /home/user
       LVM2 -- 238GB -- /home/user/data
       LVM3 -- 2GB -- SWAP
    Partition3 -- 140GB -- Unused Space
    now i've tried 3 times to install Windows into the Partition3 and then reinstall/fix Grub after but every single time i tried i get an error reporting:

    There has been an error with installation blah blah.... so i have to quit the installation, what i find weird is that although i select the unused space i keep getting partition 2 as the selected partition to be formated with NTFS...
    Code:
    -: Partition 2 (Windows XP Fault Tolera(450000MB(450000MB Free)
    Why is this? I left the unused 140GB space because i wanted to install WIndows later (4 gaming purposes)

    Code:
    bash-3.2$ sudo fdisk -l
    [sudo] password for manu: 
    
    Disk /dev/sda: 640.1 GB, 640135028736 bytes
    255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 77825 cylinders
    Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
    Disk identifier: 0x00024aa9
    
       Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
    /dev/sda1               1        2550    20482843+  83  Linux
    /dev/sda2   *        2551       59917   460800427+  8e  Linux LVM
    /dev/sda3           59918       77824   143837977+   7  HPFS/NTFS
    /dev/sda3 was unused space before i tried to install Windows - which for some reason became NTFS (although formating only started and stopped in a few seconds)

    by the way it is a SATA HDD

    anyone come across this before or can help me out? cheers

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jun 2004
    Location
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    Posts
    2,978
    Can you try again after setting /dev/sda3 "bootable"?

    All M$ must be booted from an active (bootable in Linux) partition in the first instance. You can use cfdisk, fdisk or Grub to do that.

    Here is the command using fdisk
    Code:
    fdisk /dev/sda << eof
    a
    3
    w
    eof
    My guess is the way you have set it up the M$ installer was nervous of moving the bootable flag from /dev/sda2 to /dev/sda3 because it may upset your existing systems. However the installation may be impossible since the M$ system need a reboot (or a second pass) to complete the installation procdedure. It may be the installer was homing in the /dev/sda2 that it thought you were giving it for installation as it has no problem in nuking its content, format it to NTFS and reuse your LVM partition for a M$ system installation.

    The funny thing is Linux never use the bootable flag!
    Last edited by saikee; 05-21-2009 at 07:14 AM.
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