Cuttlefish wrote:I'm guessing that all those windows partitions are primary. Could this be what's giving me the problem?

Exactly, you have already four primary partitions there.
I don't know how that HP_TOOLS work. Can't you just back-up it? Then you delete that partition, move sda3 (RECOVERY) to the end of the drive, create an extended one and put the antiX ones inside and also recreate one for the HP_TOOLS (you can put many partitions inside an extended one).

Okay, let me get this straight. If I save sda4 (HP tools) to a flash drive, then delete that partition (would this really be deleted or unallocated wasted space) this would/could move sda3 to the end of the drive. Then I could go back into sda2, carve out some space ( I reversed my approxinately 60 GB partition so I have to do this again. Yeah, stupid I know.) Then I could now have my new 60 GB partition as an extended partition, because I would now have a choice between primary and extended.

In that new partition I could further carve that up to a / , /home, swap and finally a new location for HP Tools?

I have another question? What if I got a Linux Mint or Ubuntu Live CD and allowed it to install giving it 60 GB. It would then create its own swap. I could go in and then install antiX over it, but before that create a /home with gParted. Crazy/Lazy idea that probably wouldn't work?

Dave

I have read that the only safe way to resize win7 is by using the win7 software, I hope you had a backup just in case.


edit:
in fact there are some good suggestions here:

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and you can search on Mepislovers for dual boot win7, shrink win7 partitions

cheers,
oldhoghead

oldhoghead,

Yes, I did make my recovery disks. I suppose I could use them if needed. This is a new pc, so there is nothing of value on it yet. I've got to research this some more.

Thanks everyone for your help thus far. __{{emoticon}}__
Dave

edit:
oldhoghead,

Thanks for the link.

Well, I am now dual booting Win7 and antiX 8.5. I messed around with my windows partition so much, that I figured a fresh install of Win7 would be best. Reinstalling was also a benefit for I was able to get rid of the 4th primary partition and was able to cut a 60 GB swath for antiX out of a 500 GB HD and partition it. Of course that meant losing the RECOVERY partition on my HD. __{{emoticon}}__ I had already created my recovery disks though.

Thank you so much secipolla, anti, and oldhoghead for the info. I am not quite there with gparted, but the practice and mistakes have served me well.


I am dist-upgrading right now. I'll be posting some other questions soon.

Dave

Hi there,
Recently saw something like this with a new Compaq laptop. Afraid I smell conspiracy here, ie a certain large software company along with its hardware cronies trying to make things difficult for any other OS to be installed. It was already a bit of a problem with the Windows partition and the usual semi-concealed recovery partition, but the extra partition is a real pain. Guess it depends on how much you want to keep Windows, guess there is always a temptation especially since you paid for it. How hard could it be to send out a CD/DVD with the machine? To complicate matters more what Windows was seeing on the disk seemed to be different from what Linux was seeing. It was hard to know how to proceed. What you have done seems to be the only way through. It is possible to put Linux on one partition with no swap I suppose given most new machines have 2G or more of RAM.

gnomic, I suspect that you may be right. Why should they make it easy. However, I did order a recovery disk with this machine at an extra cost...grumble.. Unfortunately there was a glitch in the ordering process and apparantly I uncovered some sort of bug,according to them, and I ordered a"Professional" DVD when my OS is only a"Premium". They refunded my money and I burned my own....Oh well. Things seem to be working and I'm happy.