I recently bought a netbook on eBay that had come with Windows 7 starter but the owner had wiped this and replaced it with Linux. I needed a new netbook and figured the fact this one came without Windows would keep the price down. I was right and I purchased a netbook for £68, now all I had to do was get a copy of Windows 7 to install using the product-key which was still stuck underneath.
In the mean time I installed the new Ubuntu 11.04 and set up a number of partitions to get it ready. I set up a /boot partition of about 500MB (for Grub etc.?), a / partition for Ubuntu and a /home partition for my documents. I also set up a “Win” partition to leave a space for Windows and a final NTFS partition to use for documents etc. when I was booted into Windows or to share across to Linux. Linux seemed to be working fine and I got on the internet etc. It was all very smooth, much more so than when I installed Ubuntu 9.10 or whatever it was back in the day.
I got hold of a copy of Windows and began trying to install it from SD card. When it came to selecting a partition for Windows to live on, I picked my 40GB Win partition but Windows started throwing a strop and told me something it seems to have told a few others before me:
Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing system partition. See the Setup log files for more information.
Not impressed, I booted into Linux and tried to set a boot flag on this partition. That took it off my original boot partition though, as a hard drive can only have one boot partition.
In the end I gave up and wiped all the partitions using the Windows installer. I then created a 40GB partition for Windows, which proceeded to also create a 100MB “system” partition at the start of the drive. I’m wondering if I’d left my room for Windows at the start of the drive in the first place if maybe I would have avoided this, but as it is – I now have to install Ubuntu all over again. Fail!! Thanks Micro$oft!