<font face="tahoma,sans-serif">I went back to Windows and tried to format the "unallocated space". It wouldn't let me. So, I used the Windows partition tool to regrow the Windows partition to its maximum size and reclaim that space. I then tried to shrink that partition again, thinking I could format the empty space as ntfs. When I went to shrink, Windows complained that tghe partition could not be shrunk because it was corrupted and I needed to run chkdsk to fix the problem. I ran chkdsk twice, but I s'm still not being allowed to shrink that partition in Windows. I could shrink it again in GParted, but I will end up again with "unallocated space" that GParted refuses to format. This is getting to be less fun as it goes along.<br>
</font><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 10:43 AM, justin caratzas <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:justin.caratzas@gmail.com">justin.caratzas@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
I've seen people advocate with either choice for shrinking the windows<br>
partition. I just went through a similar situation where I wanted to<br>
keep the Windows installation on a new laptop (Civ 5 ftw) and install<br>
Archlinux to occupy half of the hard drive. Unfortunately for me, the<br>
archlinux installer didn't like the partition that windows had setup<br>
as a result of the shrinking, something about cylinder boundaries and<br>
such. GParted wasn't working either, giving a similar message when I<br>
tried to just give archlinux the large partition to work with. One<br>
challenge was all the partitions that Lenovo had in place (recovery,<br>
installation, etc). What I ended up having to do is manually<br>
partition the unallocated space in GParted, and only make the<br>
archlinux installer assign mount points, and it seemed fine with that.<br>
<br>
As far as the space being unformatted, I think I ran into that<br>
situation and got around it by formatting the partition as NTFS in<br>
windows, and then simply reformatting once GParted was able to see it<br>
upon reboot.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
-- justin<br>
</font><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 10:14 AM, Damon L. Chesser <<a href="mailto:damon@damtek.com">damon@damtek.com</a>> wrote:<br>
> On Sat, 2010-09-25 at 09:58 -0400, Jim Philips wrote:<br>
>> I bought a new laptop and I'm trying to install Ubuntu on it. The firs<br>
>> time around, I ended up destroying the Windows installation (which I<br>
>> did not want to do). The second time I went in and looked for the<br>
>> "side by side" option for installing from the live CD. It wasn't<br>
>> there. So, I decided to try GParted. I shrank the nearly 475 gigs<br>
>> dedicated to Windows in half. After that, I am left with 235 gigs of<br>
>> unallocated space. The Ubuntu installer will neither format nor<br>
>> install to that space. Gparted won't format it either. So, from where<br>
>> I am now, there is nothing I can do with that space either with the<br>
>> Ubuntu installer or GParted. The "Format to" option is just grayed out<br>
>> in GParted. I don't remember my last install being this hard.<br>
>><br>
>> This is a Windows 7, 64 bit laptop.<br>
><br>
> It is desirable to "shrink" the partition from with-in windows. Right<br>
> click on "my computer" select "manage" go down to "disk manager". I<br>
> don't remember the exact thing to do, but from there (perhaps by right<br>
> clicking menu on the disk partition?) you can select to change the size<br>
> of the partition. Give that a try. I have never "seen" the situation<br>
> you are describing, however, I have broke windows 7 by NOT using windows<br>
> built in disk manager to change the size.<br>
><br>
> HTH<br>
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> --<br>
> Damon<br>
> <a href="mailto:damon@damtek.com">damon@damtek.com</a><br>
><br>
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