Dual-Booting Windows Vista and GNU/Linuxon the Dell Latitude E4300

By kalwisti

May 2014

Contents

1 Disclaimer 2

2 Hardware Specifications 2

3 Default Partition Arrangement 2

4 Procedure 34.1 Preparing the Hard Drive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34.2 Overview of Disk Partitioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74.3 Steps with GParted . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

5 Install Your Linux Distro of Choice 11

Abstract

This guide outlines how to prepare the hard drive of a Dell LatitudeE4300 laptop so that Linux can be installed in a dual-boot setup. Thesepreparatory steps are distro-neutral and should be valid for freeing updisk space for any variety of Linux you wish.

You will need to have several things ready beforehand:

• A Linux Live / Install CD or DVD (with the distro of your choice)

• A CD with the GParted Partition Editor

• Or, a Live Linux distro such as Puppy (which includes GParted asone of its standard applications)

This guide is targeted towards beginning–intermediate Linux userswho have some basic knowledge of partitioning as well as basic famil-iarity with the GParted Partition Editor. It also assumes that the reader

1

knows how to burn a downloaded ISO image on a CD/DVD opticaldisc, or to a USB flash drive.

1 Disclaimer

This procedure worked for me; I hope that it will save you time and work foryou also. I have tried to carefully document the steps I followed. However,I offer no guarantee that this how-to will work with 100% accuracy on yoursystem. I am not liable for any damage to your Windows operating system oryour computer; use this at your own risk . . .

2 Hardware Specifications

This used laptop (Figure 1) came with an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU (P9400 at2.4 GHz), 2 GB of RAM, a 150 GB hard drive and a 13.3” screen (native res-olution of 1280 x 800). The Dell-branded 1510 wireless-N card contains aBroadcom BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n wireless chipset. The pre-installed op-erating system was Microsoft Windows Vista Business edition (32-bit, Ser-vice Pack 2).

Although I am not a Microsoft fan, after some family discussion we de-cided to preserve a dual-boot setup so that my son could do some of hisschoolwork with Windows-centric programs (since not all Windows pro-grams can run adequately under Wine).

3 Default Partition Arrangement

The hard drive was pre-formatted by the vendor in the following way, ac-cording to GParted:

Partition # Filesystem Label Size Used Unused Flagssda1 ntfs Recovery 5.86 GB 3.14 GB 2.7 GB boot, diasda2 ntfs Windows 143.19 GB 16.29 GB 127 GBunallocated 1.84 MB

Within Vista OS, partition /sda2 is identified as Windows (C:). Partition/sda1 is designated as Recovery (D:).

2

Figure 1: Dell Latitude E4300 laptop.

Note: Your hard drive will likely have a different partitioning schemethan this unit’s. Nevertheless, the general procedure below can still be used,and you can modify it to suit your specific situation.

4 Procedure

4.1 Preparing the Hard Drive

Please note that this conservative approach does not touch the hard drive’sRecovery partition (D: , Linux notation /sda1), since this laptop did notinclude any recovery or installation discs. Hopefully this will decrease thechances of damaging / corrupting Windows Vista Business edition.

• Defragment (“defrag”) your hard drive. Look under Start > All

Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter,as shown in Figure 2.

Click on the “Defragment now” button to begin running the utilityprogram (see Figure 3).

3

Figure 2: Windows Vista Disk Defragmenter.

Figure 3: Begin defragmenting your hard disk.

Note: The program will not report on the percentage of disk fragmen-tation, nor will it provide any feedback while it is running.

• Shrink the C: drive using Vista’s Disk Management utility.

4

This is the most cautious approach to freeing up disk space withina Windows partition. You can access it by opening up the ControlPanel and typing the word “partition” in the search box, as shown inFigure 4:

Figure 4: Accessing the Disk Management utility.

Click on the blue link, and you should see something similar to Fig-ure 5:

Figure 5: Disk Management display.

5

• Right-click on the partition that you want to shrink, and choose “ShrinkVolume” from the menu, as illustrated in Figure 6:

Figure 6: Choose Shrink Volume to resize the Vista partition.

• Now you will need to do some calculation. In the box labelled “Enterthe amount of space to shrink in MB”, enter the amount you wantto shrink by, not the new size of the partition. The utility will automat-ically calculate the total partition size after shrinkage, once you havemade your choice. Figure 7 shows the dialog window you will see.

In my case, the maximum available shrink space was 129341 MB (126.3GB). I decided to shrink Vista’s partition by 113664 MB (111 GB), which leftit with a total size of 32961 MB (32.18 GB).

If you’d like some assistance with converting MB to GB, there is a handyonline converter at http://www.egret.net (shown in Figure 8).

More detailed instructions can be found online here:

http://tinyurl.com/28kj52

“Resize a Partition for Free in Windows 7 or Vista.” How-To Geek. 7 Jan.2007.

After running the Disk Management program (which did not take verylong), it showed 113664 MB (111 GB) of unallocated space. We can proceedto the next step, which is partitioning the hard disk for our Linux OS.

6

Figure 7: Enter the amount of space to shrink.

4.2 Overview of Disk Partitioning

Disk partitioning is a complex topic which is beyond this guide’s scope. I’massuming that you have some basic knowledge of partitioning as well asbasic familiarity with the GParted Partition Editor.

If you would like to read a more in-depth tutorial about disk partitioning,the Ubuntu Community Wiki is a good starting point:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowtoPartition

“HowtoPartition.” Ubuntu Community Help Wiki.

For creating our Linux partitions, GParted is the tool of choice. It is oneof the most popular partitioning programs, and it features a user-friendlyGUI. If you need additional background on GParted, Dedoimedo (aka IgorLjubuncic), a Linux Systems Programmer and former physicist, wrote a thor-ough tutorial on using it:

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/gparted.html

“GParted partitioning software – Full tutorial.” 25 Apr. 2009.

The solution I adopted was to turn the 111 GB of unallocated space intoan Extended partition—not another primary partition. An extended parti-tion acts as container for logical partitions; it may include as many logical

7

Figure 8: Egret.net KB-MB-TB converter.

partitions inside as you wish, thereby overcoming the 4 primary partitionslimit. (In other words, by replacing one of the four primary partitions withan extended partition, you can then make any number of logical partitionswithin the extended one.)1

4.3 Steps with GParted

Before diving in with GParted, it is worthwhile to restate four basic safetytenets of working with hard disk partitions:

1. The recommended way of using GParted is in a live environment—because partitioning operations must be done on hard drives whenthey are not in use, to avoid data corruption.

2. Carefully think through your partitioning needs and create partitionsbefore installing Operating Systems.

1However, because an extended partition is also a primary partition, it might be necessaryto remove a primary partition first.

8

3. Think twice and back up any critical data BEFORE making changes to apartition. Never edit partitions without a proven, tested recovery planin place!

4. Remember that Windows (XP, Windows 7, etc.) must be installed onprimary partitions to function properly. Linux does not need primarypartitions, and can be installed on logical partitions.2

I have included some screenshots of the partitioning process, taken withina Live CD session of Puppy Linux. Hopefully, this will give you a clearer ideaof the steps involved.

Figure 9 illustrates the menu choice for GParted in Puppy Linux.After careful consideration, I chose to format the 111 GB of unallocated

disk space in the following way:

Partition # Filesystem Size Mount Pointsda5 ext4 20 GB / (root)sda6 linux-swap 4 GB swapsda7 ext4 87 GB /home

(Just a reminder that logical partitions will start with the number 5 [orhigher], e.g., /hda5 or /sda5).

• The first step is to create a new partition in the free, unallocated space(111 GB). Mark the free space and click on New.

• Instruct GParted that the new partition should be an Extended parti-tion, as illustrated in Figure 10.

• GParted should confirm that the new partition will be created as anExtended partition (see Figure 11).

• To choose the filesystem types of the Logical partitions inside the Ex-tended partition, right-click on the target partition and select yourdesired filesystem, as shown in Figure 12.

• As Dedoimedo points out, until you click the Apply button, none ofyour proposed changes will actually be written to the hard disk. Sodon’t panic if you make a mistake . . . Nevertheless, I recommend thatyou work carefully, and at a time when you will have minimal inter-ruptions / distractions.

2Thanks to Dedoimedo for these reminders.

9

Figure 9: Selecting GParted (Puppy Linux Live CD).

• The final partitioning scheme is shown in Figure 13. Notice thatthe newly created Extended partition—because it is also a primarypartition—was automagically assigned the designation /sda3.

10

Figure 10: Creating an Extended partition, Step A.

Figure 11: Creating an Extended partition, Step B.

5 Install Your Linux Distro of Choice

You may now select your preferred Linux distro and proceed to its installa-tion.

We decided to install Mint 13 “Maya”, with the Cinnamon 1.4 desktopenvironment and 3.2 kernel. It was partly chosen because it is an LTS (LongTerm Support) release which will be supported until April 2017. Everything“just worked” out of the box—including the Broadcom WiFi chipset.

Debian 7 “Wheezy” (KDE) also performs well on this laptop. After usingMint a while, I decided to return to Debian roots. The only caveats I wouldmention are the following:

• Do the installation via a wired Ethernet connection because the Broad-com WiFi will not work out of the box.

• Follow the Debian Wiki’s instructions on setting up the Broadcom

11

Figure 12: Choosing the filesystem type.

BCM4322, with the proprietary Broadcom “wl” driver. They work per-fectly.

12

Figure 13: The final partitioning scheme.

13