Install openSuse 11.2 64bit on an Acer Aspire 5738G
 

I apologise for not posting it in the laptop forums, but since I am a new user, I think this forum is more appropriate.

I bought a new laptop that has windows 7 pre-installed. I did some search and saw that OEM laptops with win7 have 3 partitions, 2 hidden and the windows one.
In my laptop, there are:

• Unlabelled partition, NTFS, recovery partition, 12.70Gb
• SYSTEM RESERVED, NTFS, System, active primary partition, 100.00Mb
• ACER 452.97Gb NTFS, Boot, Page file, Crash dump, primary partition

Suse's installer offered me these options

• It ignored the unlabelled partion completely (/dev/sda1)
• SYSTEM RESERVE (/dev/sda2) mount as /windows/C
• ACER /dev/sda3 mount as /windows/D and resize to 171.71Gb

The suse pertitions will be swap, / and /home (I will decide their size on installation)


GRUB will be installed on MBR.


Is this setup good? The hidden partition do not take part in the boot process right? I do not have any data that require a backup and have the original restore disks. Besides, the laptop;s under guarantee and can just return it for a restore.


Thanks for the replies.. :newbie:

Regards,

Kapten Beard

Is there any free spaces for SUSE Partions?

The right question...

Indeed, where is the space for openSUSE 11.2 in relation to Win 7?

You should use, or should have used, the Win 7 disk tool to shrink the last partition to make room for 11.2. Then 11.2 should find the unallocated space and make a reasonable proposal for installation, one that you can change as you wish.

I assume that the three Win 7 partitions are registered as primary partitions, and that 11.2 or you would format the newly created space as an extended partition, with three logical partitions for swap, /, and /home. I believe that 11.2 will put the boot loader at the beginning of the logical partition to chainload Win 7.

If you download and burn a live-cd partitioner such as PartedMagic or GPartedLive, you can use the command "fdisk -l" to check the partition table for orienteering.

The 11.2 installation DVD rather than the CD will give you the chance to make or change any partitioning scheme as is needed, and it gives you more information and control over the installation.

If you haven't changed Win 7 using the Win 7 tool, Win 7 may not boot and you will have to restore the Win 7 boot loader. This may help. Notice the link to a Recovery Disk Download.

http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBC...9513659DB3E913

If by chance fixing the Win 7 bootloader causes a problem with GRUB, boot the 11.2 DVD and look for the Repair option when you come that far into the process.

@sohail0399: The suse installer will resize the windows 7 partition. The hdd is 500Gb total. Only 452Gb are shown in explorer.


@thorkelljarl: I do not have the cd, I just have the recovery disks from acer. I have downloaded PartedMagic and the recovery disk. Will give it a try tonight.

Thanks for the replies.

Windows machines have a limit of 4 partitions per hard disk - after that any additional drives causes the whole HDD to be converted into Virtual Drives. I tried installing OpenSUSE 11.2 on my Acer which had 4 partitions (as yours plus a D:/ drive) and all OpenSUSE offered was to use the Windows partitions. So take care!

Win 7...

If you use the Win 7 partitioning tool instead of that of 11.2 to shrinks Win 7, you might not need to use any recovery tools. It depends on by how much you want to shrink and what the Win 7 bootloader registers.

You may need to shrink things twice, first with Win 7, then with 11.2 or PartedMagic, if the Win 7 tool won't move the partition boundary far enough. Remember to defragment Win 7 before you begin. Here is a nice informative defragmenter.

http://www.auslogics.com/en/software/disk-defrag/

Thanks for the suggestions and tips. Partition resizing and suse install went smoothly and I can boot windows 7 as well.

If I have any problems,I'll ask here.

Thanks again! :)