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I am trying to install Lubuntu on a laptop but not even 10 seconds into the start of the install, I receive an error saying that the partitioning failed. The error message is the following:

The installer failed to create a partition table on WDCWD10JPVX-60JC3T1

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Create a new partition table (type: gpt) on 'dev/sda'

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Job: Create a new partition table (type: gpt) on 'dev/sda' ====================================================== =======================================================

Command: sfdisk /dev/s

===================================================== I suspect that it has to do with the boot/efi partition, but I am not sure. The laptop is currently booting on UEFI mode and has Windows 10 installed which will be overwritten once I am done. Here's my latest partitioning table that failed for some reason:

/boot/efi, 1.0 GiB with "boot" flag

no mount point, 16.0 GiB with "swap" flag

/ (root), 30.0 GiB with "root" flag

/home, 100.0 GiB with no flag

The rest of the space has no mount point and is just formatted with ext4 for storage.

Is something wrong with my configuration? I feel like I need a partition with GRUB (or something similar) mount point. I tried to stay true to the recommended partitioning scheme that I read on the Ubuntu wiki. Any help is highly appreciated.

UPDATE:

It turns out that there was a partition (on the current state of my hard drive) with a lock sign and a cd-rom mount point that could not be unmounted/modified in any way. I erased that partition on Windows 10 and now the installing is running fine, so far at least.

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    The wiki may need to be updated: 20.04 by default will use a swapfile, rather than a partition. 30G for the root partition seems small, currently I'm using 36 GB. My /boot/efi is a very small bit of a 512 MB partition. You may have a different problem if you still have Win10 on the machine, however. There are some limits on the number of primary partitions that can be used - 4 seems to be the limit unless the partition table is GPT
    – Charles Green
    Feb 13, 2021 at 22:13
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    If you are creating a new partitioning table (GPT?) all your disk gets "factory reset": you lose all data immediately, windows and all.
    – Levente
    Feb 13, 2021 at 22:27
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    No, I have not seen this type of error. But if you indeed add a new GPT table, that makes you start from a clean start. On the other hand, you cannot format an entire disk for ext4. You can format only partitions. And one of your partitions, the EFI one needs to be FAT32. OOps, now I read the error again, it cannot create the GPT partition table! Maybe it's some kind of "write-protection" that Windows has set on the disk?
    – Levente
    Feb 13, 2021 at 22:32
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    I would encourage you to just use the default partitioning that Ubuntu can perform. There's nothing wrong with it, and it does eliminate guesswork while you're learning about the system
    – Charles Green
    Feb 13, 2021 at 22:53
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    Okay, I get the thing about the "boot" flag. However, if you want to use an independent partition for your data, then you will have extra hurdles, are you prepared for that? Look here what I mean: askubuntu.com/a/1309681/1157519
    – Levente
    Feb 13, 2021 at 23:02

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In my scenario, I had to manually create my partitions by installing and using gparted in the live environment, then setting up the partitions manually. This was because I wanted to keep my existing /home partition.

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