Re: Installing Jessie on a computer that current has Windows 7 on it
On 20150310_1410+0000, Dan Purgert wrote:
> On Mon, 09 Mar 2015 22:07:17 -0600, Paul E Condon wrote:
>
> > I have NO interest in dual boot. I simply want to wipe the disk and
> > install Jessie. I have last weeks weekly build of
> > debian-testing-i3k6-xfce-CD-1.iso.
> > I starts nicely like I have seen many times before, but when I get to
> > partitoning the HD there is trouble. It won't overwrite the NTFS
> > partitions that contain Windows 7. I think I have read about this and
> > there is some special trick, but I can't find it. Please, someone. Help.
> > Point me to the directions.
>
>
> I ran into that myself with a couple of installs. Turned out the NTFS
> partition was shot, and needed a run through chkdsk (-r?). Once that
> completed, a reboot back to the liveCD allowed me to deal with the drives
> using gparted.
Matt and Dan,
Thanks for the suggestions. The suggestions didn't work when I tried
them, but they did suggest some further things to try, which also
didn't work. Telling you what I tried might help me think more clearly
and maybe get you to make further suggestions.
When I got this refurbed Dell Optiplex GX620, it came with Windows 7
already installed from a reseller on the web. Soon after getting it I
had complications in my health and the project I bought got delayed.
That was in 2013. I did take it out of the shipping box, power it up,
and see Windows 7 running. But I only used it to verify that no way
was I going to abandon Debian for Windows. My home computer set up is
three old computers (all Debian Jessie). The Dell was never put to
use. But now after all the trying to install Jessie, the computer can
only boot from a CD. Its Windows 7 stuff has been damage to the point
where the Windows 7 recovery CD reported that Windows 7 can't be
recovered. The suggestion of running CHKDSK wasn't tried in the manner
that I'm sure was intended because by the time I got it, I knew that
it didn't boot Windows off the hard disk anymore. I was able to use
fdisk from the netinst CD. I have used fdisk before so I pretty
comfortable with its clumsy user interface. It responded to my
commands as wanted up until the w (write) command. The version of
fdisk on the netinst was slightly different from my memory. On some
other version it had been uppercase W. And the first indication of a
problem was that after messaging that it had written the changes to
disk, it messages that it could not read them back into memory and
that they computer should be re-booted. I had also seen this before,
so I wasn't totally devastated by the need for yet another
reboot. After reboot, I used fdisk on the netinst disk again and got
the disappointing news that the format on disk had not been changed.
Does fdisk (which is Open software) actually read some secret flag on
the HD and abort the write to HD and then not abort the 'success' message
to the user? This seems a bit duplicious to me. But the fact of the
matter is that the same behavior is similar in the partitions section
of netinstCD. It responds to all commands that intend actual writing
to HD as if it really going to do it, and then another message that
the write failed. My Knoppix disk has a program on it whose name is
'fsck.ntfs', but the manpage on the disk say it is a dummy that always
reports success, and that it was put there so that live-disk the demonstration
would actually work nicely. My suspicion is that the bios rom actually
contains a flag that disables something in the data path between the
softlevel and the electronic inside the HD. But that doesn't make sense
because there has got to be a way for end-user (owner) to replace a
HD that is too small, or has failed. Everything that I can think of fails
to explain what is happening. Maybe there is a no-write flag and a no-report-of-write-failure flag, and the bios hides them both when the bios edit code
is invoke with the F-key they tell you to use. And only a very few people
really know. Of course, I don't actually believe that, but I'm at a loss for
an explanation of that doesn't make be sound like a crazy paranoid.
Comments? Suggestions of things to try?
--
Paul E Condon
pecondon@mesanetworks.net
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