Tried to dual boot W11 & Ubuntu & bricked my PC
Not sure if this is the right place to ask or if anyone can help me, but today, I installed the ubuntu ISO & converted it to a bootable format on an 128GB SD card (All my USBs are too small) I ran the installer as normal & here's where I think I messed up. I allocated a 27GB partition for linux but that option didnt apper on the installer upon being asked where to install to. Thinking nothing of it, I ran the installer clicking on the install to drive option & halfway through it failed saying something like Error16 Drive is busy & the installation was only half done. now on attempt to restart windows is completely gone & all I can do is boot up a very fragmented Ubuntu without internet & firefox works very slowly. If anyone can help, then it's appreciated. I've always wanted to try Linux & just got an SD card large enough to do it, but now this happens.
okay, that's fine! make sure to turn off bitlocker.
once you've done that you're gonna resize your partitions in windows. i'll walk you through that.
so your C: drive is 210 GB, how much free space do you have on it?
about 90GB is left on C:\ but I'll only need 30GB for my linux partition. Besides, I can always resize the partition later, right?
right on, you have enough space to not end up in trouble!
in windows, right click the start menu and choose "disk management"
it'll bring up an old looking MSI that shows your drive and the different partitions it has.
right click the C drive and choose "shrink".
you'll get asked how much you want to shrink it by iirc. type in the number and click okay.
once that is done, the disk management window will show the new free space.
if everything goes as planned, make sure you turned off bitlocker and restart into windows.
okay, that's done. Now what do I do? I am assuming we need to tell the PC to install linyx into that partition (& only that partition without erasing the entire drive)
alright, go through the ubuntu installer and pick the "install alongside" option when it comes up. it ought to be at the same time that it offers you the option to erase the disk altogether. the "installation type" menu. if you don't get that option, stop and say so.
e: i just finished installing ubuntu desktop lts alongside windows 11 in a vm using the process you're doing. its the disk selection menu, not the installation type.
Let me check if I have this right. Once i have the USB and disc partition set up boot from the USB & go to the installer. Then select download alongside and chiose tge partition to install linux to?
Nah, you’re gonna boot from usb and go through till you get the option to install alongside and pick that.
It’ll only show you that option if you have some unallocated space on your disk from resizing the c drive though.
Okay so Just leave some unallocated space of tge size needed tge option to install alongsode windows will be tgere select that and itll install to the unallocated memory, without touching windows?
Yep. As long as you pick install alongside it won’t screw up windows. If you don’t see that option in the “disk selection” part of the process then bail out.
okay, installed with all the right options & it works. Thanks for your help
Hell yeah!
Take some time to get familiar with using chroot or boot-repair to fix the bootloader when a windows update inevitably breaks it.