Partition requirements for installing?

[Infarction]

I was trying to install Vista onto a spare partition yesterday, and the installer refused to use the partition. I deleted it, formatted it, tried again, no go. Deleted it, made it bigger, repeat, no go. I was using the 3rd partition on the drive (still a primary though) but I was wondering if Vista requires itself to be on the first partition? Any ideas?

(Partition sizes I tried using were 50GB and 90GB)

[Dortz]

It needs to be on the first partition on any drive. I had this problem specifically with beta2, and i just installed my current version on its own drive. also, be wary when installing it with any linux distro, as vista will take over your bootloader.

[Jaseva]

It needs to be on the first partition on any drive.

Just out of curiosity, do you know why this is?

[Dortz]

microsoft hates competition. duh.

I really don't know the actual reason for it. I'm guessing some security thing. (First partition = Vista's security blanket?)

[jbennet]

windows has always required being the first primary partition on the first drive

in relation to linux - windows always wipes the MBR - thats why you usually install it first

[Dortz]

I actually haven't run into that. I installed XP on a slave drive with Gentoo on the other. I had to re-install the boot loader, but it worked alright.

[Infarction]

windows has always required being the first primary partition on the first drive

May I present my counter-argument:

jimmy@tensai ~ $ sudo fdisk -l /dev/hda
Password:

Disk /dev/hda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *           1          13      104391   83  Linux
/dev/hda2              14         263     2008125   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda3             264        6489    50010345    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda4            6490       60801   436261140    5  Extended
/dev/hda5            6490       12715    50010313+  83  Linux
/dev/hda6           12716       60801   386250763+   7  HPFS/NTFS

WInXP ended up on hda3 because it requires a primary partition. hda5 houses FC6 (/dev/hdc1 has Kubuntu as well, though I'll probably just move it to hdc2 so I can put Vista on hdc1 ;))

[jbennet]

thats fine because your chainlaoding windows fron GRUB. What i meant is that if there is no GRUB windows has to be the first on the first

[Infarction]

thats fine because your chainlaoding windows fron GRUB. What i meant is that if there is no GRUB windows has to be the first on the first

I guess it doesn'talways have to be the first partition of the first drive then, eh? ;)

Anyways, I moved Kubuntu to another partition and tried installing Vista again with no success, so I'm just giving up on it. If it doesn't like being on Disk 0 Partition 1, well, too bad for me...

[jbennet]

cant you just Vmware vista? from kubuntu?
on my pc i got Ubuntu which is VMWaring Win2k so i can still do VB and MS Access

[Infarction]

I guess I could set up VMWare, but I was mainly trying to see how VIsta compares on its own, and I've heard that running things in a VM does make a noticeable speed difference.

[jbennet]

In VPC its unbearable. Dont know about VMWare

[markdean]

In VPC its unbearable. Dont know about VMWare

I run Vista on VMware Workstation 2.5.2 and ESX 3.0, and recently moved to Workstation 6 beta (much better!).

Give it at least 1Gb of RAM-2Gb is better, make sure that your host is at least 2.8Ghz-HT or dual cores are better and have the fastest hard drives-SCSI U320 15K RPMs work wonders, SATA is OK, and is better than PATA, but SCSI is best for virtual, not just for Vista but for running most OSes in virtual. I try to keep competing VMs on separate drives to keep contention low which is a best practice.

My system has 4Gb of RAM and can go to 16Gb and has dual CPUs and that is pretty important if want to run more than a couple of VMs so look for that if you are looking for a new host at some point. I usually have three or four running depending on what I'm doing. My host OS is CentOS 4.4 so that may be another reason Vista runs almost as fast as bare metal and is yet another reason to stay away from MS Virtual PC and Server.

On ESX 3.0, I'm hard pressed to tell a difference between native and VM in doing most tasks. That's because ESX is bare metal virtualization.

The Aero interface won't be available due to lack of 3-D graphics. Having seen it and worked with it, it's cool, but after a bit, yawn...

[leomdg]

Hey all, have read the thread and here's my story: Got a hdd pretty much the same as jbennet. Don't care about the exact distribution of partitions but the important point is I've got 2 partitions (among others):

- 1 primary on the first sector of the hdd.
- 1 logical on the only extended one after all the primaries.

Tried to get Vista on the logical one so my partition table looks like I wanted but NO!
Then said: "Well, logical partition.. Ok.. Sounds like sth Windows wouldn't like"..
So I told the installer to get Vista on the primary partition placed on the first freaking sector of the only hdd this pc has and NO! again!.. It has no excuses, the partitions are both over 40gb in size and it's not like they could have broken clusters, the hdd is brand new so I don't know.. I hate this kinda stuff..

So I gave up, then I saw this thread and decided to tell my situation, maybe helps someway to figure out what the heck the installer needs... Candy maybe? I don't know..

Cheers.