I agree, but it seems that windows are hungry and like to eat all. So, it is often necessary to resize (shrink) a windows partition. In this case, it is better to do it very early, to prevent file dispersion all over the partition, and to have less to risk in case of problems.

Just after installation, the most of a windows partition is empty, so it is rather easy to proceed. Even no defrag is needed. It took just 9 seconds for me early this year (although the first time I did it I spent about 3 hours in total). In general, expanding a partition is much more easy and fast than shrinking or moving. Adding partitions is even easier, unless we are caught by the 4-partition limit.

Ok i'm on my desktop and this is what it says word for word

FATAL ERROR: Bad primary partition 3: Partition ends in the final partial cylind

Alright, here is the fdisk -l /dev/sda output(i found out what you were asking for)

Disk /dev/sda: 120GB 120034123776
255 Heads, 63 sector/track, 14583 Cylinders
Unit = Cylinder of 16065 x 521 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
dev/sda1 1 192 1536000 27 Unknown
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary
dev/sda2 * 193 3379 25599577+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
dev/sda3 3380 13726 83112277+ f W95 Ext (FBA) <--that last bit isnt right
dev/sda4 13727 14594 6962176 17 Hidden HPFS/NTFS
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary
dev/sda5 3380 13726 83112277+ f W95 Ext (Whever belongs here)

Partition 3 is an extended partition, not a primary one!
From where this error message comes? from the slack installer?
And how this extended partition was made? by that same installer?

Can you try to run the Gparted LiveCD and see how it understands the partitions?

The FATAL ERROR comes from cfdisk.
all the others come from fdisk.

It was originally done by vista, but i upgraded to XP and i reformatted the partition.

I can, but where i'm wireless i can't display it word for word, what am i looking for?

See if fdisk (rather than cfdisk) will open the device. I'd be inclined to delete sda5 (that listing above can't be right BTW) and then sda3.
Then reallocate sda3 (as an extended) to allow the allocation to be aligned "correctly". Then add logicals as needed.
I'd be thinking Vista is to blame because it doesn't align as everyone else expects.

And yes, and the extended partition is a type of primary partition - it occupies one of the 4 (primary) entries in the partition table in sector zero.
It was developed (later) as a bit of a hack to get around the "4 primary" limitation.

Hi,

If I'm reading everything right, you used the original 'vista' partition table? That looks like the problem. If you wipe the drive then create the partitions for your 'XP' install and the partitions for your linux install. Then you should not see that error.

I think this problem was presented to you in other posts in this thread. 'Vista' handles the NTFS file system differently than other users of NTFS even 'XP'.

I would first wipe the drive, create the partitions desired then install 'XP' and then Linux.

I have an idea:
You could use Gparted Live to slightly shrink your partitions, so that they come to cylinder boundaries. This would perhaps fix the partition limits without erasing all the disk.
Leave the partition 4 as it is, it must be some "recovery" partition from the old installation.

Please, take care to leave about 50 sectors between NTFS partitions.

It would be useful to write here the information reported by Gparted about partitions.

No, no, no.

You don't need to leave extra sectors free between partitions. That's just silly. I also have serious doubts as to the accuracy of claims being made in this thread about how Vista handles NTFS. ...and there is definitely no need to shrink any of the partitions to match cylinder boundaries.

The main problem here is the use of cfdisk. There are lots of things that confuse/irritate cfdisk and cause it to crash, particularly with SATA disks, and especially when partitions appear in other than their logical order. Fdisk is old, but is far, far more reliable.

Ignore the "Partition n does not end on cylinder boundary" messages. They're relatively worthless warnings, and all they mean is that there's going to be a few sectors wasted at the end of that partition.

However, a major issue is that I do not believe even for a second that the output of fdisk -l that was pasted in here is accurate. It would be particularly insane for the third primary partition table entry to be the extended partition with a fourth primary partition in use, and sheer madness to think Vista has allocated a huge fat32 filesystem left to it's own devices. I'm not sure it's even a little valid to have the fourth primary partition slot used at all with the third primary partition holding the extended partition container.

The "unknown" partition type is likely to be the hibernation container--do not mess with this partition or you risk breaking hibernation functionality. It's likely going to be type 0xAF.

Please paste accurate and precise information about the partition table layout (again, the output of `fdisk -l /dev/sda`), or don't expect anyone to be able to give you useful or accurate advice. Without the correct information, all you're likely to get is more of the wild guessing that's been going on.

What I told about extra sectors between (or before?) NTFS partitions (a kind of "buffer" ) is not my invention, I read it several times and some people claim that they had problem not leaving space at all, that was solved after doing things that manner.
I think me too that it is silly for an O.S. to use space outside the disk partitions, but it would be not the only such thing with windows. I even know that some programs write things in the master boot sector, to "lock" that program copy to the specific computer.

About resizing, It would be just a manner to obtain the cylinder adjustment, in the case something was wrong in the previous state of the partition table. If misalignment with the cylinder limits isn't really a serious "error", then no need to resize anything.

and when i use the live cd
and was planning to reinstall everything
I always use Manual partitioning to avoid losing my windows information
PROBLEM is its ONLY SEEING /dev/sda ONLY


but when i open terminal and execute fdisk -lu

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 2048 2099199 1048576 27 Unknown
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 * 2099200 162995489 80448145 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 162981888 237890519 37454316 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 237890520 312576704 37343092+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 237890583 247658039 4883728+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 247658103 247850819 96358+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 247850883 273506624 12827871 b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda8 273506688 312576704 19535008+ 83 Linux


help on this one.

what's the fix here
thanks

Hi,

You would get better coverage of your inquiry if you generate your on post with the problem. Rather than post to a old post. Check the date of the post.