Dual booting Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex (8.10) with an existing Vista install

I did this on my 1530, and it went quite well! Except for all the hangups that I ran into. So I figure I'll share my experience, and my obvious lack of experience with linux, and for anyone else looking to try this, you should have a pretty easy time. Of course, do this at your own risk, and back up all your stuff. Now the reason you want to do it this way is that you don't feel like bricking your hard drive by using gpart, and you don't want to reinstall vista.

The Ubuntu iso can be found on Ubuntu.com. I would post a link but apparently i'm too big a nub. I'd recommend the 32 bit version, as I heard the 64 bit version can be problematic for a lot of users. I haven't actually tried it though, so be my guest. I used 8.10.

The first thing you'll need to do is shrink out some space for the linux partition and swap. Ubuntu automatically configures these partitions when you run the disk.

The first thing you'll want to attempt to do is right click computer, manage, make sure you get elevated permissions, and then select disk management. You may see three different parts in the disk. The one that's 3.00 gb is the media direct partition. The largest one will be your vista partition.

You'll want to right click on that, and select shrink. It will then give you a prompt, which displays size before shrink, shrink space available, and an input box that allows you to enter the amount of space to shrink (This is the amount of space that you want to set aside as free space on your drive). This is in MB. So if you want 50gb you'll have to enter 50000.

Now there's a few things that can happen here. If you're lucky and you have the space available that you're looking for, when you hit the shrink button, it'll do stuff, and the space will appear in the bar showing your volume partitions as just free, blank space. Great! You win. Hard parts over. Do not format or partition or anything this free space.

Now, if 0 appears, or it doesn't show the space available that you think you have, don't panic! It's ok. We can try a few things.

My first suggestion would be to download a trial copy of perfect disk 8.0 professional and run that. It's a really nice disk defrag tool, and i believe it's the only one that meets all of microsofts certifications for ntfs, for vista. There's an option to consolidate free space. It's right in the ribbon-esque interface. Link? Go fish. I'm a nub, remember?

Now that should allow you some space. Again, Do not format or partition or anything this free space. If it's still insufficient, or zero, you can attempt a few more things.

1. Disabling and deleting the page file (temporarily, obviously). ( Open up System in Control Panel, then Advanced System Settings \ Advanced \ Performance \ Advanced \ Change \ No Paging File \ Set (make sure to hit the set button! )

2. While you're in there go to Startup and Recovery \ Settings and set the write debugging drop down to "None"

3. Disable system restore.

4. Disable hibernate.

5. Run the disk cleanup wizard, make sure to remove all of the restore points and the hibernation file.

6. Run Perfect Disk 8 again.

This should solve your problem. If it doesn't, sorry!

Now, return to the disk manager, right click the vista partition, shrink. You should be able to shrink out your desired amount of space. Once again, if it goes well, great! Once your space is shrunk out, don't forget to go through and undo steps 1 through 5 right above.

If not, you might get an error stating "Access is denied."

One thing you can attempt to do is slightly reduce the amount of shrink space. Some people have had success with this. If that's unsuccessful, here's the last thing I tried, and it worked for me. I ran chkdsk! And i found 2 minor issues, and once they were fixed, I was on my way.

To run chkdsk you can either

1. Go to computer, right click c (or whatever your volume is called), properties, tools tab, check now. Follow the prompts, leave the boxes checked, and it will say you'll need to reboot your system to perform the check. Roll with it.

2. CMD! Right click on CMD, run as admin. type "chkdsk c (or whatever): /f". Or just chkdsk /f. The /f is the switch for automagically fixing errors. Again, it will require a reboot and run at startup.

That should work. Once again, Do not format or partition or anything this free space. You should be able to shrink out your space without getting the error. If you do still get the error, you can at least sit back and think you might have been able to format completely and reinstall vista by now!

Alright.

Now insert your disk with the ubuntu 8.10 iso burned to it in your dvd rom drive and restart. Boot from dvdrom, I think it's f12 at the dell screen.

1. The first menu will have 5 options. The second one is Install Ubuntu. Pick this. I don't really know for sure what the other ones do. Be my guest.

2. Your touchpad probably won't work. In fact I'm certain it won't. So plug in a usb mouse, and select your language, local, and keyboard layout.

3. The prepare disk space dialog will appear. The option you should select is "Guided - use the largest continuous free space." This will partition out the free space we worked so hard to set aside earlier. The other ones will probably cannibalize your Vista partition. Who knows?

4. Enter in your information, you can migrate your documents if you want it works pretty well, and it will install.

5. Let it restart when it's finished. You'll see the Grub boot menu after it restarts. In 10 seconds Ubuntu will load itself by default unless you move the selector. Windows Vista/Longhorn will be at the bottom and it works fine still trust me just leave it alone for now. Boot into Ubuntu.

Now, you'll have a few things to sort out. Your webcam and mic are fine. Well the mic will need to be configured but it's fine. Bluetooth is fine. If you have the intel wireless card, that will be fine. The dell wireless card I'm not so sure about. The fingerprint reader can go to hell. I'm sure there's a solution for it.

The two hangups I had were with the video card driver (mines at 8600) and the touchpad.

For the video card~

When I went to System / Administration / Hardware Drivers, weird stuff was happening. By weird stuff I mean it looked like it was doing stuff but it wasn't actually doing stuff. The solution I found that worked was to "refresh the package management system." That's probably linuxese for something. Anyways you go to terming and enter the command: sudo apt-get update
Go back to your hardware drivers and you should be enabled to enable your video card.

For the touch pad~

Open the terminal again and type: gksudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst
This is your menu configuration file i guess. You need to append "i8042.nomux=1" to a few parts in the file. Without the quotes obviously.

near the top:
kopt=root=(a whole bunch of stuff) ro i8042.nomux=1

down a bit:
defoptions=quiet splash i8042.nomux=1

and down some more, there should be a section like this:
title Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-19-generic
root (hd0,6)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.2 blahblahblahe2541ef ro quiet splash i8042.nomux=1
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-19-generic
quiet

This last section might not be identical to yours, but there should be one awfully similar. Just append to the same spot. Reboot and then your touchpad should work. You'll even be able to configure it under the mouse settings.

That's about all I have to offer. I am by no means knowledgeable about linux, but I did do a fair bit of looking around and trial and error to get this running nice. I'd appreciate any input, and I hope this helps someone. Oh and please point out any typo/grammatical errors!

 

SNAP, I actually have the 8600, and probably the same touchpad and I didn't have to go to all that trouble. =\

At least it's all working!

 

Yeah, that's why I wanted to post it. I seemed to have gotten the "worst case scenario" every step of the way. Also this ubuntu stuff is pretty sweet and I highly recommend it.

 

Natheo - Good write-up and thanks for taking the time. I just ordered my 1530 after many months of hesitation. I have Ubuntu 8.04 with me and I'm trying to get 8.10 downloaded. Usually I have been dual-booting Vista with XP - this will be my first Ubuntu-Vista dual-booter. Thanks again...

 

Thanks Natheo - really helpful article.
A couple of things not quite the same for me though with a Dell 1525 (Vista pre-installed):
- the touchpad works fine.
- more seriously, the Ubuntu Installer ("Prepare Disk Space", screen 4/7) does not recognise the space freed up by shrinking the C: partition in Vista. The option "Guided - use the largest continuous free space." just selects 100% of the entire disc, so I assume it would overwrite the existing partitions.
The last option (Manual) doesn't offer me any controls to select anything other than 100% of the entire disk.
The first option (Guided - repartition) allows me to repartition the already shrunk C: partition, but if I wanted to do that, why would I have pre-shrunk it in Vista? - I still can't use the free space left when I shrunk it in Vista.
The only option which seems to do what I would expect is: "Guided - use the entire disk". (which is not what I want)
None of the options presented do what I want, which is to use the space Vista kindly freed up for me.

So why is this? Is it something to do with the two small partitions Dell have put on the disk - one at each end - maybe confusing Ubuntu installer into thinking that the entire disk is empty? (newbie question).

Would 8.04 behave in the same way?

any help much appreciated!
(as you can guess I never progressed beyond screen 4/7 because I didn't want to overwrite Vista).

 

It's selecting 100% of the largest continuous free space apparently. It didn't overwrite my vista install. But I won't be held responsible for ubuntu cannibalizing anything.