I am a newbie to Ubuntu/Linux. I started using it just from a few months ago. A friend showed me how to install it alongside with Windows in the first time. Recently I had to install Ubuntu in another machine and there was this problem: the Ubuntu 14.04 installer failed to detect my Windows 10 partitions, to where I was about to install Ubuntu. It detected my whole hard disk as a single drive whereas I actually had partitioned it into 3 drives.
The image below depicts the problem exactly:
So I searched and searched for whole 2 days and finally found a solution that saved me from the agony !! 🙂 I am going to share with you the solution today.
The problem occurred mainly because I had both GPT and MBR tables present in my partition. Ubuntu cannot detect partitions if GPT table is present. So I had to delete the GPT data.
To fix this problem, you can follow these steps:
- Boot the emergency disk (Ubuntu or other linux Live CD) and open a terminal.
- Type gdisk /dev/sda (change /dev/sda to whatever is appropriate to access your hard disk, if necessary). The program is likely to complain that it’s found both MBR and GPT data, and will ask which to use. It doesn’t matter which you tell it to use.
- At the Command prompt, type x to enter the expert’s menu.
- At the Expert command prompt, type z to zap (destroy) the GPT data.
- Type y in response to the confirmation about destroying the GPT.
- Type n in response to the query about blanking the MBR. Caution: If you answer y here, you’ll destroy your Windows partition(s)!
And voila!! Problem solved. The Ubuntu installer could easily detect all of my partitions and I installed it in one of them.
I hope this will help you. Happy dual OS-ing!! 😀
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