Been looking at LINUX for many years. With the death of WinXP & my XP Laptop I'm ready.

After several failed attempts to install. Seems like every time I try LINUX it turns to @#$!!

Bad ISO on DVD. Burned using two different DVD Drives and...
I guess the ISO I had on the Flash Drive was corrupted.

So back to the Library and did everything on their computer.

Now the DVD boots like it should.

>>> PROBLEMS <<<

I read the documentation on the DVD and it mentions hugwesmp.s. I don't see it listed on screen. No worries.



The REAL PROBLEM is Partitioning.
Win 7 eats up 3 Primary Partitions leaving only 1 Primary or an Extended with it's multiple drives.

So what do I do with only 1 Primary Partition without wiping out Win7 installed on the computer. I might need Win7 in this Windoze Wurld.



If LINUX will run on my system I might just wipe the HD clean of windows. The DVD now seems to like my computer. MEMTEST ran fine.

Dell Inspirion M5030
AMD Athlon II P360 Dual Core 2.3GHz
4 G RAM
230 G HD



Awaiting your reply soon so I can get LINUX installed.

What distribution of Linux are you working with? And can you provide more info about the documentation which mentions this file hugwesmp.s?

You seem to be migrating from a live media boot towards considering installing Linux.

For me on systems where it never mattered, I installed Linux entirely right away. By the term 'never mattered' I mean it was because they were spare systems which no longer booted.

For the case of booting entirely off of Linux and no longer dual booting. I set up a system for dual booting, and eventually realized I always booted into Linux. Eventually I obliterated the Windows section. If you find that there's absolutely no reason to ever boot into Windows, then perhaps this is the deciding point as it was for me.

My shorter answer is that if you have 8-16GB of disk space free, you can install most Linux distributions and run fine, and the existing partitions can be left alone until you decide you can finally erase Windows entirely.

I use a USB Stick saves on bad burn DVD's and they're easily reusable - with your specs I do not see why it would not run on your laptop (LT).

Is that a live Version of Linux? If yes, boot it into live mode if it runs on live mode then it is suppose to work when you install it.

back up personal data before install, if you're going to wipe windows, and then want windows back again make sure you have a means of installing it again. then just do a install with linux and let it wipe your drive. install its self,

I'd strongly suggest a split system / (root) /home

It's hugesmp.s; I think you hit <tab> to see selections. (1997Slack? I'm cruel)My idea for experimenting with Linux .iso's without disturbing M$Win is VirtualBox
(You could even setup a virtual simulation on a virtual disk with exact SAME partitions as you 'really' have, then 'attack' it with various installs! Erase VirtualMachine & repeat eternally!)

Welcome to LQ! Enjoy discovering Linux, despite all the glitchespuzzles

1 members found this post helpful.

I personally use unetbootin to boot iso's - then install from the booted system. Better than burning disks.
https://unetbootin.github.io/

Please edit your post to be more G rated.

Your machine can run Gnu/Linux. Don't think about many things yet before you can test run a Linux in that machine. Having a hands-on experience you shall have many options later on for reinstalling or installing many distros as you like.

This time do these:
1. Burn a distro live-cd installer. Advisably easy distros: Mint, Ubuntu, Salix
2. Let the live-cd installer handle all partitioning and installation.
3. Reboot and drive.......

Hope that helps. Good luck and enjoy.

m.m.

step 1) Within Windows, use Disk Management to shrink one or more partitions if necessary to create some space. At least 4GB, but 10GB would be a nice round number.

step 2) Boot the Linux installer. Most will have some sort of manual partitioning option. If not, use something else. I recommend Debian.

step 3) Manually create one logical partition in the free space. (A logical partition will be within an extended partition.) You can optionally shrink this partition later and create many more logical partition within this extended partition. But you honestly only need one.

The installer will likely give you a warning asking if you really want to continue without making a swap partition. You do not need a swap partition. Later, you can optionally create a swap file, which is more convenient in many ways. But with 4GB of RAM, you don't need it.

Please see my post:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...08#post5743208

In your situation, I would start with virtual machines.

Or, see if your computer can boot from an external drive, attached by means of FireWire, Thunderbolt, or USB.