debian 7 on a machine with windows 7 and openSUSE 12.2
 

Hi,
I have a thinkpad laptop, on which there are windows 7 and openSUSE 12.2, I want to install debian 7 on it and I want it to replace the openSUSE and to keep the windows 7 partition untouched.

How can I do that ?

Thanks,

The easiest way is to launch your Windows, remove the openSuse partitions, then start from the Debian CD/DVD/USB and when it comes to partitioning let the installer use the free space.
Alternatively you can start the installer and point it manually to the openSuse partitions.

How can that be done ? can you give more info about how to partition the free space?

thnx

Windows 7 has an inbuilt partition manager (http://pcsupport.about.com/od/window...-windows-7.htm) and should mark the Linux partition as something like "unknown" or similar. Remove those partitions.
The Debian installer can take care of that automatically, this would be the easiest option.

Thanks for the quick reply.
I managed to open the windows 7 partition manager, but my question is, how can I know that the boot loader is not going to be deleted and as a result I will loose my windows(I don't want to loose my windows).

There are no partition called unknown all of them are called healthy (primary partition).

Thnx

Parts of the bootloader reside on your Linux partitions, so you will loose that anyway. That doesn't mean that you will loose your Windows (as long as you don't delete the Windows partitions). In any case you should make backups when doing something system critical, like partitioning or installing an OS. The Debian installer will install a new bootloader for your.

I just booted into my Windows system to have a look. The Windows partitions (red circles in the attached image) are shown with filesystem, here NTFS, while the Linux partitions (green circles in the image) have not mentioned a file system.
As you can see I have 3 Windows partitions and 4 Linux partitions on this system.

OK, then I have three linux partitions.

What if I want to boot to windows before I manage to install debian 7, can I still be able to boot to windows?

thnx

You might want to boot into opensuse and post the output of

etc

No, in that case, before removing the partitions, you have to reinstall the Windows bootloader. You can do that with starting a command prompt as Administrator (type cmd.exe in the search box of the Start menu, then press Control+Shift+Enter), then type in the command Reboot the system to test if it worked, if it has you will directly boot to the Windows installation without seeing a boot-menu.

it gives the following error:

thnx

Ok, then it is not installed on your system. In this case you have to run the command from the command prompt provided by your Windows 7 install disc.

I don't have windows 7 install disk, I got it installed when bought the computer.

You can download here, even works with reinstalling using your wins key.
http://malwaretips.com/blogs/downloa...ows-7-sp1-iso/

So what I have to do is downloading the image, burn it on a DVD and then what ? I imagine that I don't have to reinstall the windows,am i right ?

thnx

No reinstallation needed, just follow the instructions here: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/32523...ader-problems/