Installer: Drive error not reported by installer, unable to dual-boot

[barney_1]

Binary package hint: partman-ext3

Case:
-Installing from LiveCD (ubuntu-8.10-desktop-i386.iso)
-Installing on Compaq R4000 laptop with a previous install of WinXP

Symptom:
-When reaching the partition step of the installer there is no option to resize the existing partition.
-No reason or warning is given about why partition cannot be resized. There is no notification that resizing is not possible
-The only "guided partitioning" option is to use the full partition (thereby overwriting windows).

Fix:
I knew from previous experience that I should be able to resize the partition. I entered gparted and there was an exclamation point next to the partition (/dev/sda1). When double-clicked I was informed that there were an incorrect number of cylinders reported and that partition resizing would not be possible until I entered windows and ran "chkdsk /f" then rebooted twice. I did this and it fixed the problem, the installer then gives me the option to resize using the guided partitioning.

-The LiveCD installation needs to make the user aware of such a problem.

[Fabio Bossi (fabio-bossi-deactivatedaccount)]

As I noted in bug #69176, I think this bug should not go ignored for such a long time.

[Fabio Bossi (fabio-bossi-deactivatedaccount)]

Possible duplicate of bug #69176.