Windows Installation Frustration

Usually I work under Ubuntu Linux. But for some things I need Windows especially photography.

In the last time I had to install Windows XP on my notebook because its hard disk failed. There I did install Ubuntu first and Windows second and I end up with a Windows installation where the system drive was labeled F. The problem was that the Windows installation detected the first two Linux partitions as something to matter and give them virtually the drive letters C and E (D was assinged to the DVD drive). At the end I hat to repeat the Windows installation with both Linux partitions hidden.

Now, today it was time to reinstall my Windows on my Desktop Computer. The reason was degraded performance. The partitions on my 250 GB hard drive was the following:

1. 30 GB Ubuntu partition
2. 40 GB Windows partition
3. 120 GB data partition
4. free space

So I simply booted from the Windows XP CD. In the setup I deleted the 40 GB Windows partition and created a new on in the same place. I ensure that the 40 GB partition was detected as C: and continue with the installation. As Windows comes up after installation all things seams right. I began to install drivers and the last Windows updates.

But at one point as I would assign a different drive letter to my 120 GB data partition. At my old installation it was O now it was E. But I could not change it because Windows says it is the system partition. I wonder. The 40 GB C partition was the start partition and the 120 GB E partition was the system partition. Why? I discovered that Windows put the boot.ini, NTDETECT.COM and ntldr at the 120 GB partition. This means that the data partition would now majority for the boot process. That is a thing to avoid!

To discover what Windows did with my partition table, I did boot a Linux Live CD and did run fdisk. Windows created a extended partition as second partition (40 GB) and added in this the 40 GB C partition as logical partition. I think because Windows is not able to boot from a logical partition it puts the kernel loader in the 120 GB data partition which was primary. But I never asked Windows to create a logical partition. A primary partition would be without any problems. I have no clue of the reasons Windows created a logical partition.

To recover this mess, I decided to install Windows another time. But this time a created the partition for Windows with fdisk under Linux and did hide the two other partitions. This time all things went good.

The Lesson at the End

Never let Windows create its own partition if you have more than one partition on your disk. Hide all the other partitions before install.