Weird Problem With Laptop after installing Linux
 

I'm experiencing a weird problem with my laptop, which is why I'm
lookin' for expert help from you. The laptop in the context is a HP
Pavillion G6 1313AX model. Let me explain-
It all started with me changing the hard drive of the laptop.
Originally it was a 500 GB Hitachi HDD, which I replaced with a
Western Digital Scorpio Blue 1TB piece. I started off by booting the
comp with Hiren's Boot CD installed in a pendrive, and partitioned the
hard drive with 'partition wizard home edition'. The Layout of the
partitions are like below-
3 primary partition
1st 50GB for Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit, NTFS
2nd 20GB for Sabayon Linux 10 64 bit, EXT4
3rd again 20GB for OpenSuse 12.2 64 bit, EXT4

Then I made the rest extended partition, out of which I created 6 logicals
1st 2GB common swap for both the linux, SWAP
2nd, 3rd, 4th & 5th all 150GB, NTFS
Last one, the 6th around 239 GB, NTFS

I preferred NTFS on most partitions because it's readable from all the OS I use.

Now for the problem,
It all ran pretty smooth, till last week. Then all of a sudden, the
windows started misbehaving. It started showing the boot screen when I
choose to start with this OS, but never the login screen appeared. Out
of frustration, I reinstalled the windows. Then it started perfectly
again. Then, as I havn't deleted the linux partitions, I tried
reinstalling the boot loader (grub2 in this case, worked perfectly
untill now), then windows started behaving like that before. Only this
time the boot screen shows for 3-4 minutes or so, then appears the
login screen. Then when I log in, the computer works fine. But if I
restart the computer, it's again a near 5 minute wait till I can log
in into the windows. However, both the linux works smooth like fluid.

I would have ditched windows long ago, if it weren't for my job. My
office requires me to have windows on my laptop (I think the System
and Network admin guy doesn't know how to manage interplatform
connectivity, I'm pretty sure he doesn't know anything about linux,
and that's my problem). The reason why I use two kind of linux, is
because they have completely different user experience. I can't ditch
them.

So, where have i gone wrong? What exactly is the problem? If it's the
HDD, I'm still in guaranty period to exchange it. I won't even mind
reformating my computer again, all the data are backed up. But please
give me a solution at the earliest, all my works are stalled because
of this.

Here's my laptop configuration
AMD A6 3420 Quad Core 64 bit CPU 1.5GHz
4GB DDR3 RAM
1.5GB AMD Radeon DDR3 Graphics (It's actually two graphics cards,
512MB CPU integrated, Power Saver. 1GB Standalone, High Performance.
They work in AMD CrossFire tech)
1TB Western Digital Scorpio Blue (Originally 500GB Hitachi, replaced
it with the current one)

For anything, if I have missed to mention, here is a link to complete
reference to the laptop config, except for the HDD

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...roduct=5220738

Please help, Thanks in advance

I would also like to mention, that I used Opensuse 12.1 with grub as boot loader, alongside windows 7 in dual boot, that worked fine. I think it's a problem with grub2? Am I right?

I'm not good with partitions but have you tried giving windows a bigger partition space? Also, I don't know in what order you installed the os's but if you are willing to reformat install windows first then install the linux distros, I doubt its a grub issue. I'm thinking its a harddrive because 3-4 minutes is way to long with your laptop. sorry i cant be of anymore help.

Just to confirm. If you boot into Windows, use it a little while, shutdown normally, then reboot into Windows does it still take a long time?
I'm probably wrong but I've noticed that when Windows applies automatic updates it sometimes takes "forever" to boot. If you're sharing NTFS partitions between Windows and Linux then perhaps Windows may also see that one of them is "corrupt" in some way and run chkdsk on boot. I'm afraid I haven't used Windows 7 enough to know how you could check this though.

Hey,
I have the same requirement as you ... I prefer Linux but the job cannot handle anything but WindBlows.

I solve this conundrum by installing Linux as the only native OS and then install WindBlows in a virtual machine (I use VirtualBox). You certainly have enough disk space and cpu horsepower to go this way and it makes life MUCH simpler.

See my post:-http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/slackware-14-on-a-thinkpad-w530-what-works-and-what-doesnt-4175433442/

cheers
pete

Thanks Pete (bimboleum), it really is WindBlows. What a mess of a OS this is. Only if I could've, I would've demanded my money back, which I paid for this. I'll try out your advice. I'll let you know if it works. By the way, is this virtualbox available on openSUSE yast repository?

Still, thanks for helping everyone. But I'll leave this thread 'unsolved' for right now, for more opinions from any of you guys. Let's see how it goes. If solved, I'll post the solution here later.

Cheers!

@273: I noticed so, but in this case, it's the linux that detects the drive unmountable or corrupt. In windows however, it works good. I ran 'chkdsk /F D:' (this was the problem drive'), then linux started mounting it again without failure. Still during the boot time of linux, it shows 'error with sda6 (D:)', then it boots up normal again. I know this because I've turned the splashscreen form silent to verbose, just so that I can track system status during startup. At the end, it's all the same, linux OK, windows floundering about.
And for auto updates, it's disabled just when I installed windows. Manual update only.

I'll try havin' it on virtualbox as Pete suggested, still I would like to have it stand alone. See if you can dig up something for me. :-)

I don't quite understand this. What I was suggesting was that when Windows was taking a long time to boot it was "fixing" the disk in the background but for whatever reason was not displaying a dialogue. If you could reboot from Windows and it started again without the pause then that would be my guess as to the problem. Another way to diagnose this would be to unmount all but the C: drive in Windows (if you can) and try it then.
Since the Linux and Windows install can't interact directly then I can't see how it could be anything but either a problem with a shared partition or a hardware fault.

If you're having problems with a particular partition then I would say that although the drive is new it may be faulty. Also if you don't have any data on the partition you can delete it & recreate it using the windows disk manager.

I'm starting to feel that it's nothing but a hardware fault. I'll run some diagnostics. Let's see what comes out.

Hi,

Can you check your windows system if it runs file system checks at boot?

Since in my experience Windows Vista and up do not like the way Linux systems handle their NTFS partitions, and detect 'errors' on them. The result being that windows will try to repair those errors at boot (sometimes even removing files, this forced me to drop windows as a installation completely and switch to virtual :P). If this would be the case a different filesystem on the shared filesystems might solve your issue.

I've detected what's wrong!
 

Hello folks! I got it, I tried and found out what was wrong. U guys were right all the way. It IS the HDD that went wrong. Well, I was covered within waranty, so I sent it back for replace ment.
However the method that I followed, is a awfully long one (actually found it on the net), so I'm posting the link here. It might help out other guys who have the same turmoils. Just follow the link, it's all explained there!

http://blog.shadypixel.com/monitorin...smartmontools/

Cheers! :)

You figured it out, that's great.
I have had a chance to look at your partitioning scheme.
This would be wrong,because wins is going to take 2 from the gate, System Reserved & the OS

Yes EDDY1, you're right. Win tends to keep the boot loader, configuration and other necessary batch files out of the partition in which you may install windws. This happens when you create the installation partition during win setup, and I'm yet to understand the purpose of this. But if you create the partition before the setup, with a third party tool, then windws gets forced to install the important thingies within the same partition. However it doesn't effect the normal operation of the computer. I've done it many times before.

Didn't know that 1. Great info.