Partition magic 8

[silvershadow21]

Hi Guys,
My Laptop is a Hp "2104 Eu*, very decent spec, and i am running Xp media cntr.


I got the free upgrade Vista home premium Cd and did install it as the main Os.

This was a fatal mistake, and i decided to go back to Xp, due to lack of Driver support.

I was thinking of partitioning of a section of my Hd to install Vista on, to see how far if any, it has come on, but partition magic is not allowing me to *create a new Partition*.

When i try this, i get the msg

"The selected disc contains one or more partitions which cannot be moved"
to complete the task use the operation menu, rather than the wizard.


(there is nothing in the operation menu, that allows you to do this, as it is all blanked out.


On the "c" drive, all i have is the Main Partition + the *HP recovery partition*.

there is also a partition which is called *Type D7*, which i havent a clue what it is for.
Its about 1 gig in size, but states that its full, with no remaining space left.



Can anyone enlighten me, on why its not allowing me to create another partition

cheers

tom

 

[beady]

This link talks about partition type d7. They mention it as a Dell feature, but HP use a similar thing (here).

You can only have 4 primary partitions on a disk. I think your problem is that you've filled up that quota (3 that you see and one hidden). In order to have more, you need a logical partition, but you can't create one. Firstly, I would check that there are indeed 4 partitions allocated. I'd use linux and fdisk or parted from a livecd, but I'm sure other people can point you to windows based programs that will work.

Next, you're going to have to delete one of the partitions. Once that's done,. resize everything to give you space, and create a new logical partition. Within this logical partition you can create many more, releasing you from the 4 limit. You can then install vista, linux, bsd or whatever.

A word of caution, obviously back up any important data before you go messing around with the hard disk. Secondly, I've no idea how Vista (or XP for that matter) will behave when you try to install to a non-standard partition. In the past, for me anyway, XP installations have always insisted on overwriting the MBR on the disk, which is a pain during a re-install on a dual boot system.

Good luck

 

[bodser]

personally i would delete all but your main os partition. Who needs the HP recovery partition anyway. And delete the other D7 partition.
Then just have 2 partitions, XP and Vista on dual boot.
this is just what 'I' would do, I know what i'm doing and dont need recovery partitions etc or any crap that some company think I should have on my pc.

 

[silvershadow21]

personally i would delete all but your main os partition. Who needs the HP recovery partition anyway. And delete the other D7 partition.
Then just have 2 partitions, XP and Vista on dual boot.
this is just what 'I' would do, I know what i'm doing and dont need recovery partitions etc or any crap that some company think I should have on my pc.

I dont mind at all deleting the recovery partition, as i have the backup disc's created anyway.
My only worry is this partition D7.
I dont know what it is for

Its about 1 gig in size, but according to the partition manager, its full.

With what i am thinking !!

 

[Curious123]

Dell have a hidden partition for doing pc diagnostics on their machines, maybe it is something similar.

 

[beady]

My previous post links to inforamtion about what the D7 partition is. It's for 'QuickPlay', which as far as I can tell means that if you put a dvd in the pc, and start up, if you press a button, it will boot into a reduced OS, so the lappy runs as a DVD player only, not a full PC. The partition contains the code to do this. If you want to keep this feature, you'll have to keep the partition. Did you check for a hidden partition? As you can only see 3 atm, you should still be able to create one more.

 

[silvershadow21]

Nope. no hidden partitions here.

Strange !

looks like if i want to do anything, the recovery partition would have to go