I'm in the process of trying to set up a dual boot on my lenovo x1 carbon laptop. I have done this once before, many years ago.

So far I have repartitioned my drive to free up space for Fedora. I'm running the live boot off a usb, and need to setup the storage configuration. I'm tempted to just use the "Automatic" option, but I recall running into to trouble with this the last time I set things up. I don't recall why I used to the custom configuration last time... maybe because after installation, my system would just go straight into Windows with no Fedora option? Unfortunately, I do not recall exactly...

Can someone offer some advice here please? Can I just go with the Automatic option? Or should I configure some things in a certain way?

I never go with automatic, there has been some distributions in the past where the automatic feature used the entire drive and effectively wiped out existing operating systems. Custom installations are usually not so complicated, once you agree to the use of the designated free space, it'll set up the partitions and go automatic from there.
Your laptop is likely UEFI based, which means it will still go into Windows automatically, you will likely have to hit a designated F key at the Lenovo splash at bootup to get the UEFI boot menu to select either Windows or Fedora. Which F key, Google it or go into UEFI settings (BIOS) and navigate to the boot tab, it may mention something there and may require you to set it up enabled.

On the contrary, I would advise to use the default, which will be to setup LVM for you. I still find the Fedora/RH partitioning less than obvious. Any issues can be cleared up later - except the loss of the system of course.
Before you start, create a system image from Win10 - I never use Lenovo, they seem to go out of their way to screw Linux users. I always create the system image when working with Win systems - works too when/if you have to re-install.

This is kind of where I'm going, just make sure it don't use the whole drive, show it where you want it to install itself and leave defaults for the rest. Highly unlikely to loose anything else on the drive.

EDIT: Keep in mind, the Windows 10 WinRE partition needs to be right after the Windows OS partition, if the free space created is in between the Windows and WinRE partitions, there's a good chance a future Windows Creator's update will shrink the Windows partition and create a new WinRE after it, rendering the existing one at the end of the drive useless.
If this is the route already taken, and new partitions are created between Windows and WinRE partitions, the Windows recovery environment becomes disabled.

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That is nice to know. I have never partitioned a drive this way, so have never come across this issue.

I don't pretend to understand the thinking of M$oft, but when I create a system image, it offers to delete the recovery partition and states the image is all that is needed ... :shrug:

On the occasions that I have needed to restore a Win10 system (always a result of a Win10 update), no problems. Then I do a simple restore of my Linux systems and proceed. Such a contrast as how easy it is with Linux ...

If you aren't sure, verify that your windows 10 is UEFI (or not). Make sure then that Fedora is installed UEFI.
Did you shrink your windows partition to make room for Fedora, leaving unallocated space? Did you re-boot windows after the resizing to verify that it still boots? If your windows is UEFI, do you have any familiarity with it? If not, do some research so you understand what to expect. I would turn off anything related to hibernation in windows before installing Fedora.

You might take a look at the link below at the Fedora Project which has some info. I believe Fedora by default will do an LVM install which requires a separate boot partition as well as the separate EFI partition (which should already exist if windows 10 is UEFI).

https://ask.fedoraproject.org/en/que...boot-w-fedora/

This seems to be the case for me now:




Is there a simple way to fix this to avoid future problems? Is it really worth worrying about? I'm leaving windows installed really as an emergency backup. I won't be using it much.

At this point, my drive is partitioned as above, I've created a restore point on a usb, and have Fedora 29 on a usb ready to go. I've also confirmed that Windows 10 is in UEFI. The comments lead me to believe I should just go ahead with the automatic storage configuration and deal with potential problems after that?

The WinRE partition on the first drive is for push button reset, this is in case Windows fails to boot, you may be able to hit an F key to start this recovery mode that can possibly fix boot problems automatically, give you a command prompt, restore a backup image etc. If Windows fails to boot 3 times or so, some systems are set to start this recovery mode automatically.

It appears you don't have a recovery media partition where the Windows original setup DVDs are typically stored that the WinRE push button recovery would resort too in the event you want to recover from the factory image. You may want to look at your recovery media creation options to see if you can burn something to DVDs or USB that can be used in a full system recovery. In the search field, type "recovery drive" and you should have a desktop app offered to create recovery media. The WinRE partition must be enabled for creating recovery media.

The reason that WinRE push button recovery partition can eventually be recreated is because Microsoft knows a lot of us shoot first ask questions later, they make sure you can recover your OS if it all of a sudden stops working when you really need it, this helps lower the amount of people employed at help desks because less people call for help when it can fix itself automatically after a few failed boots.

In GPT drives, partitions are in order of creation, if you leave things the way they are in that pic you posted and install Fedora in between, the WinRE partition will still be partition #4. To set up the WinRE recovery in Windows, it is the number of the partition that is used. Unfortunately, it still needs to reside after the Windows partition as of last fall, last fall's Creator's update surprised a lot of folks who installed Linux between Windows and the WinRE. To see if your recovery environment is still enabled, open a command prompt as administrator and enter command: Reagentc /info. The output should show if it is enabled and also mention where it is as in the example below.

Your best bet at this point is to make a bit for bit image of the current WinRE partition, then delete it, then create a new partition after the Windows partition of the same size and paste the image in that new partition before installing Fedora. This way it's partition will still be the 4th partition and you may not need to reset it's configuration. BootitBM is my favorite tool for doing this as it has partition tools and Image For DOS to create the image and paste it in the new partition, but there are other software suits that can do the same. Then check again with the ReagentC /info command to ensure it's still enabled. If not you will need to run some Reagent commands to enable it, it's not that complicated and there are lots of tutorials via a Google search.

EDIT: If anyone decides to use BootitBM for the tasks listed above, during BootitBM media creation steps, leave all default settings except choose 64k for Vesa video and choose "Partition work" instead of "Normal" when this option presents itself. Normal will start the application in such a way that you can accidentally hit OK which will install the Boot manager, you don't want to do this, you want to work on partitions. When it boots to the partition work screen, hit exit to get to other options menu, then click on Image to create partition image. It creates compressed images of data only, it won't include free space in the image making it smaller in size than the actual partition size.

OK, trying to wrap my head around all this...

Brains, can I use the TBWinPE/RE Builder? I'm not sure how this is different from the BM tool. I just the Builder to copy the winRE partition to a usb key (I think!), but I'm not sure what to do next in order to delete and then recreate a moved version of this partition.

I've never used this tool, and you will need to download and install Windows 10 ADK which is just over 4GB in size, and it appears Image for Windows would need to be installed. BootitBM is only a couple megabytes and you don't install anything. You simply download and extract it, click on MakeDisk.exe to create an ISO to burn to disk or have a USB key plugged in and install to the key. Then you boot whichever one you created and work on the partition and image creation in DOS mode independent of any OS. And you don't need to rebuild anything, just relocate the partition.

After downloading and extracting BootitBM, click on Makedisk to create either an ISO to burn to CD or a bootable USB key, have the key plugged in and follow instructions in my last post edit. Then you will need to reboot and go into computer settings (BIOS) and change booting to legacy instead of UEFI, save the setting and exit and hit the appropriate key if necessary to get a boot menu where you can select to boot the media you created.

If you selected partition work instead of normal during creation as I mentioned in my edit, it will start at partition work window. You should'nt need to make an image, I remembered BootitBM has a slide function. Highlight the WinRE_DRV partition and click the "Slide" button on the right. In the window that appears, there should be a large number of megabytes in the "Space before" box, change that number to a 0, leave the Data only check in the check box and click OK. It will give a warning but I've yet to see this software suite fail and I've used it for 17 years, click OK and it will take a while and recreate the same partition with same name, same UUID, same data just after the Windows OS partition and delete the old one. When it completes, find your way to the main menu by clicking OK and exit, at the main menu, click "reboot" at bottom right of screen and go back to Computer settings to enable UEFI boot instead of Legacy so you can boot back into Windows.

Now open Command promp as adminstrator to check if Recovery environment still OK. The command: ReagentC /info may still show it enabled, but that might not necessarily be the case, to ensure it is good, disable it, then enable it with following commands below, if after that it still shows it is enabled you should be good to go.

You can also run a test with command: ReagentC /boottore, then close all windows and reboot, it should reboot directly into recovery environment. This is a one time thing, hitting quit or exit will get you out of there and back to Windows.

Thanks for the detailed response. Just to confirm, when I run MakeDisk, I should use the PC Platofrm (BIOS) option, not the PC Platform (UEFI) option?