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A customer recently gave me their old computer with Windows XP on it. They said the motherboard was dead so they just gave it to me. They also said that it was a 40GB hard drive but after taking it apart, I found it was a 120GB hard drive and the motherboard battery needed to be replaced. When I got it running I found that there was an 80GB partition which was almost empty except for a few documents. When I tried to update it to Windows 7 There was not enough room on the hard drive as the operating system was using the smaller partition and all programs were on that partition.

How can I remove the partition and restore the 120GB hard drive? I had a terrible time getting Ubuntu installed as the BIOS would only show to boot from a network or the system files. Is there a way to remove this partition using Ubuntu?

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  • If you can run live Ubuntu. Use the GParted or Disk Utility for managing partitions.
    – Diprute
    Mar 27, 2014 at 4:25
  • @Diprute He can only boot from network or system files, so he won't be able to get a LiveUbuntu up until he fixes that.
    – Mr.Lee
    Mar 27, 2014 at 21:28

2 Answers 2

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Okay, I have to justify the trust given. First of all, you should update your BIOS. Ubuntu is very dependent on this. I can show you the way how to overcome impossibility of booting from CD, but you may experience some problems after installation if you don't update your BIOS.

Now,

How to boot from CD even if BIOS doesn't allow this

  1. Download and install VirtualBox
  2. Create virtual disk from physical drive

    Run as Administrator (probably you are already Admin):

    VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename C:\path\to\file.vmdk -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDrive0
    

    Refer for instruction to link given above if you are running Ubuntu.

  3. Create Virtual Machine

    • run Oracle VM VirtualBox as Administrator
    • Select Machine → New or press Ctrl + N enter image description here enter image description here

    • Attach vmdk file:
      enter image description here

    • Attach Ubuntu ISO file or use physical device enter image description here

    • Set boot order as shown below enter image description here
    • Click OK to save settings
  4. Start Raw and press F12. Choose CD enter image description here
  5. At this point, follow this guide from the step 6. Don't touch existing partition, just install Ubuntu. After Installation you may simply reboot computer and boot into Ubuntu.
  6. To remove Windows partition, use either Gparted or Disks utility.

Feel free to ask if something goes wrong!

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Since you can't boot from a USB/CD-ROM, if you have another HDD that has Ubuntu on it, you can mount the HDD (I'm assuming it's either SATA or IDE ports on the motherboard) and boot off of it instead of the old HDD. Gparted is a tool than you use can partition the other drive for you.

Basically, you can substitute a LiveCD with a HDD with ubuntu with it. This answer requires another HDD and cable, as well as an open port.

Alternatively;

You can just extend the partition inside of Windows XP to give that smaller partition more room. That way, the Windows 7 has room to install on. This is a Windows solution which I will not get into here.

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