Puppy on HP Pavilion g7?

[edoc]

I acquired a manufacturer-refurbished HP Pavilion g7 laptop.

When booted the BIOS tries to force the MS version of windows #8 to load.

While I may eventually want #7 (never on the laptop, right now I just want a frugal install of Puppy.

I changed the Boot order in BIOS (there are two places to change, not the usual one) to Internal CD-ROM, then USB Device, then Internal HDD.

I repartitioned the large partition for Puppy.

6 partitions now show in this order:

sda1 ntfs WINRE 400.00 MiB hidden. diag
sda2 fat32 260 MiB boot
sda3 unknown 128.00 MiB msfrtres
sda5 ntfs 86.67 GiB
sda4 ext3 488.28 GiB
sda6 ntfs RECOVERY hidden

When I try to boot it ignores the Puppy CD & goes into Repair mode.

I wait for it to fail then go to a menu where I select the CD-drive and then get Puppy. (I use "Puppy pfix=ram")

GRUB (both versions, legacy and Grub4Dos) fail as they don't see the partitions correctly and when I tried to force Grub4dos to install to the MBR the error in the log file said "ERROR: Too few sectors to hold GRLDR.MBR"

Should I just reformat the beast and install Puppy - then if I decide to slum and add MS #7 later (for that rare just-in-case moment that some dummy could not write a non-proprietary MS-dependent app to meet a momentary need) I can add it then?

Thanks!

[Dewbie]

Have a look at this and see if it applies to your machine.

[edoc]

Thanks for the suggestion!

The Secure Boot feature was already Disabled.

I probably should create a Recovery Disk for MS #8 - maybe someone will trade me my #8 license & Recovery Disk for #8 for theirs for #7?

Or is that been made impossible somehow by the control-freaks at MS?

[Monsie]

Hi edoc,

It appears to me that your problems are due to Windows 8 having been pre-installed on this laptop --OEM version? You have a Windows Recovery partition and the Windows bootloader is trying to make a repair because it cannot find Windows 8. Note that if you ever wanted to install Windows 7 (or Windows8), Windows would create the necessary partitions it needs for back-up and recovery.

While I may eventually want #7 (never on the laptop, right now I just want a frugal install of Puppy.

I take it that this means you do not want Windows on your laptop at all. If that is so, then I would use Gparted to wipe out your hard drive partitions and start afresh. This should delete the Windows bootloader, and given that secure boot is disabled in the bios, then you should be able to re-partition and re-format for Puppy. I would create partitions with ext3 or ext 4 --your choice.

Since your Windows 8 license is likely an OEM version, I doubt that you can use it to trade with anyone for a copy of Windows 7 Maybe your vendor or Hewlett Packard would let you downgrade to Windows 7? Also, any recovery partition is only useful for the particular machine, and not of use to anyone else unless they happen to have the identical model of computer. If at some point, you do want to set up a hybrid system whereby you are dual/multi-booting Windows and other Linux based distro(s) my experience has been that it is easiest to install Windows first, then your Linux OS. While you may be able to partition and install Windows afterward, I suspect you would find it much harder to accomplish, and likely, it would give you some grief...

Hope this helps,
Monsie

[Dewbie]

Monsie wrote:

If that is so, then I would use Gparted to wipe out your hard drive partitions and start afresh.

And just to be safe, I would first do this to erase any artifacts that might survive a repartition / reformat.

[edoc]

Thanks to Monsie & Dewbie - very helpful info!

[edoc]

OK, we rolled the Micro$oft version of windows back to 7 (we agree that 8 is garbage).

I may never use M$7 but it's there just in case.

Meanwhile, the monopolists at M$ have a new BIOS-based scheme to block Linux - it is EFI/UEFI.

So far we have been unable to get any version of GRUB to build a menu to select between Linux and M$.

I've read several threads on this Forum and all seem to come to a dead end - other than some hopeful references to FatDog64.

[rcrsn51]

Have you tried turning off UEFI? There are sample how-tos here and here.

[edoc]

In the fist one Secure Boot was already disabled and there is no CSM boot option in the HP Pavilion g7 BIOS.

The second one does not work - the BIOS ignores the altered settings - made in both the default and legacy areas of the boot order menu.

Thanks for the links!

Our son just reminded me that this is a 64-bit laptop so I may want to go the Fatdog64 or other 64-bit Puppy route that has addressed the EFI mess effectively.