This is new problem with Dell's Vista machines. The problem is that Dell--for no good reason--is sometimes using an unconventional partition structure with these particular machines. Note the issue is not really a Vista incompatibility, it's that Vista allows an "illegal" partition structure and Dell has fallen into the trap of using it.

Since the dawn of time ... well, at least since 1981 when the PC era began ... partitions have always been sized in units of whole cylinders. That means partitions always begin and end on cylinder boundaries. (Ever notice how you can't always get a partition of an exact size? It ends up rounding up or down to the nearest cylinder boundary.)

Vista, however, blithely ignores the industry rules and may create partitions that begin or end in the middle of a cylinder. Linux, fdisk, Partition Magic, and other tools that expect to follow the rules will have trouble with such a partition layout.

Vista systems that are upgraded over previous XP (or earlier) systems will use a conventional partition layout because XP didn't allow such illegal partitions. But I've noticed many Dell systems that come with Vista preinstalled seem to use this unconventional partition layout.

That's what linux is complaining about.

That's also the reason for the MediaDirect problem. First, the MediaDirect partition is disguised by using an illegal "partition type" indicator--'DD' instead of 07/0C like standard NTFS/FAT32 partitions. Second, on many Vista systems I've noticed the partition's boot sector isn't at the front of the partition space, but many sectors into the partition. Again, that's considered illegal by the rest of the industry.

(FWIW, if you want to get a Dsrfix dumpfile and email it to me, I can tell you exactly where your partitions begin and end.)


Dan Goodell
www.goodells.net/dellrestore

thanks for getting back to me.

i have no idea how, but i solved the problem. i used gparted, which was able to view the partition table. the 1st few times when i used gparted it messed up on me with error messages when i tried to create new partitions, probably because of what you said with vista starting on weird cylinders.

maybe i did it by accident, maybe gparted 'corrected' me, but it FINALLY was able to create a ext3 partition. i did notice that it didn't fill all the space up, so there's about 5 megs between the end of the ext3 and start of vista.

installing linux wasn't typical either...you're only allowed 4 primary partitions (or 3 primary + 1 extended). thus, i had to use a file as swap rather than a partition.

anyways! finally got everything installing, GRUB works properly, and now i'm a happy camper!

i came across a gentoo wiki for the 6400 that said if you're gonna install linux, just wipe your hard drive and reinstall vista. he's right!