Dual-Booting Windows 7 Starter and Pardus 2011 on the HP Mini 210 Netbook

By kalwisti (David P.) 26 June 2011

Contents
1 Introduction 1.1 Disclaimer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Hardware Specications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Default Partition Arrangement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Procedure 2.1 Preparing the Hard Drive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Background Information on Hybrid ISOs . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Installing Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2 2 3 3 3 8 8

3 Post-Installation Conguration 10 3.1 Initial Update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 3.2 Broadcom 4313 WiFi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 3.3 Synaptics Touchpad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Abstract This guide outlines how to prepare the hard drive of an HP Mini 210-2180NR netbook so that Pardus 2011 Linux can be installed in a dual-boot setup. As the HP Mini does not have a built-in optical drive, you will need to have several things ready beforehand: a USB thumbdrive which has a Pardus 2011 .iso burned on it with a utility such as Isowriter1 ; another USB thumbdrive which has either the GParted
I would like to thank Anton Tolboom (atolboo) from the Pardus Worldforum for reading through this document and offering some corrections. 1 There is information on this in Section 2.3 and a discussion of hybrid .iso les in Section 2.2.

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Partition Editor, or a Live Linux distro such as Puppy (which includes GParted as part of its standard applications). Although the installation steps are specic to Pardus 2011, the preparatory steps are distro-neutral and should be valid for freeing up disk space for any Linux variety you wish. Also, based on my experience so far with the HP Mini, it seems to be a very Linux-friendly device. So if you choose to completely erase Windows 7 Starter, I think that you would have most of the hardware functionality you need in a Linux-only setup.

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1.1

Introduction
Disclaimer

Although this may contain a few errors or inaccuracies, this procedure worked for me; I hope that it will save you time and work for you also. I have tried to carefully document the steps I followed. However, I confess that I have never installed Microsoft Windows from scratch or had to recover / restore it. So there might be some things I have overlooked. I offer no guarantee that this how-to will work with 100% accuracy on your system. To quote Debians tongue-in-cheek warranty, If it breaks, you get to keep both pieces.

1.2

Hardware Specications

The HP Mini 210 netbook runs on an Intel Atom N455 CPU, with 1 GB of RAM,2 a 250 GB Hitachi hard drive, a Broadcom 4313 802.11b/g/n wireless chipset and a 10.1 screen (with a native resolution of 1024 x 600). It also ships with Windows 7 Starter Edition as its default operating system.3
2 The RAM may be upgraded to a maximum of 2 GB. Adding extra RAM is very simple almost idiot-proofand the upgrade can be done in less than 10 minutes for about $2530 US. (Its User Guide provides instructions on the memory upgrade; there are also several how-to videos on Youtube). I ordered a 2 GB RAM module online from Crucial: http://tinyurl.com/6zmqb4a 2GB, 204-pin SODIMM, DDR3 PC3-10600 memory module Part Number: CT1946647 3 Windows 7 Starter lacks these features: Aero (eye candy); Windows Media Center; DVD playback; streaming music and video to / from other PCs; the ability to connect a second monitor; XP mode for accommodating older programs; and a 64-bit edition. Also, it does not allow you to change your desktop background or your visual design scheme, or switch user accounts without logging off.

Dual-Booting Windows & Pardus on HP Mini 210

Although I am not a fan of Microsoft, after some discussion we decided to try and preserve Windows in a dual-boot setup so that my son could do some of his schoolwork in Windows 7, if necessary.4

1.3

Default Partition Arrangement

When I received my HP Mini, the hard drive was pre-formatted with all four of its primary partitions occupied. This is how the HD was partitioned, according to GParted:

Partition # sda1 sda2 sda3 sda4 unallocated

Filesystem ntfs ntfs ntfs fat32

Label S YSTEM

Size 199 MB 214.52 GB

Used 66.59 MB 25.8 GB 15.44 GB 11.58 MB

Unused 132.41 MB 188.73 GB 2.62 GB 91.60 MB

Flags boot

R ECOVERY HP T OOLS

18.07 GB 103.18 MB 1.00 MB

lba

Windows 7 Starter Edition identies /sda2 as Local Disk (C:). It is by far the largest partition and is used for storing Windows program les, user les, etc. The S YSTEM partition (/sda1) includes folders labelled Boot and System Volume Information.

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2.1

Procedure
Preparing the Hard Drive

To prepare the Minis hard drive for a Linux dual-boot setup, I followed these steps:
4 He is being taught Windows at school, but at home he is learning to use Linux and Mac OS X. I imagine that if you must run solely Windows, it could be possible for the experience to be tolerable if you use Mozilla Firefox (and add-ons such as Adblock Plus, Flagfox, etc.) rather than Internet Explorer, install a good, free antivirus program such as Avast and be careful with your Web browsing. I also installed other FOSS software such as LibreOfce, A Mozilla Thunderbird, Sunbird and Filezilla, Gnucash, MiKTEX and Texmaker for my LTEX work.

Dual-Booting Windows & Pardus on HP Mini 210

Important: This conservative approach does not touch either the Windows S YSTEM partition (sda1) or the R ECOVERY partition (sda3). Since the HP Mini does not ship with any recovery or installation discs, hopefully this will decrease the chances of damaging / corrupting Windows 7 Starter Edition. The R ECOVERY partition of the HP Mini includes a stern warning (see Figure 1) that its les should not be altered or deleted, and that doing so could prevent a system recovery in the future.

Figure 1: Windows 7 Recovery Partition Warning. Defragment (defrag) your hard drive. I used the Disk Defragmenter on the C: drive (from within Windows 7). Prior to running the utility, I checked and saw that the C: drive was being reported as 3% fragmented. (This was after only two days

Dual-Booting Windows & Pardus on HP Mini 210

use!). The Disk Defragmenter made a total of 10 passes; this took approx. 4550 minutes. To access the Disk Defragmenter, you can either type defrag in the Search box above the Start menu (i.e., the multicolored Windows orb) or navigate to it through the menu structure: Start > All Programs > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter. A screenshot of the Disk Defragmenter is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Windows 7 Disk Defragmenter utility. Shrink the C: drive using Windows Disk Management utility. Next, I used the Windows 7 Disk Management utility to shrink the C: drive. (I previously read online that the most cautious approach to freeing up disk space is to use this native Windows tool). To start the Disk Management tool, type disk management in the Search box above the Start menu (i.e., the multicolored Windows orb). You should select Partition C:, right-click on it and choose Shrink Volume. The utility will query the partitionthis will take some time 5

Dual-Booting Windows & Pardus on HP Mini 210

and state an amount by which it can be shrunk. Due to unmovable Windows 7 les, the maximum amount it could shrink my partition was 97016 MB (94.74 GB). These unmovable les run within the Windows operating system, thus making themselves in use and therefore, impossible to move. Figure 3 shows the window you will see prior to shrinking the C: drive.

Figure 3: Windows 7 Disk Management tool. After running the Disk Management tool (which did not take too long), it displayed a reduced C: size of 119.78 GB (NTFS lesystem) and 94.74 GB of unallocated space. However, there are still four primary partitions in place5 , which means that we must delete one of them to allow for a Linux install. We will do this in the next steps. The four primary partitions are shown by Windows Explorer in Figure 4. Copy the content from the HP T OOLS partition to a USB thumbdrive
5

S YSTEM, C:, R ECOVERY (D:) and HP T OOLS.

Dual-Booting Windows & Pardus on HP Mini 210

or an external hard drive as backup. (It is not a large amount of les approximately 12 MBso it can easily t on a thumbdrive). Use GParted to delete this partition (/sda4). To boot up GParted (or Puppy Linux) from a USB thumbdrive, please follow the instructions at the beginning of Section 2.3. After shrinking Windows /sda2 partition and deleting HP T OOLS (sda4), GParted reported the arrangement below:

Partition # sda1 sda2 unallocated sda3 unallocated

Filesystem ntfs ntfs

Label S YSTEM

Size 199 MB 119.78 GB 94.74 GB

Used 66.59 MB 33.59 GB

Unused 132.41 MB 86.18 GB

Flags boot

ntfs

R ECOVERY

18.07 GB 104.18 MB

15.44 GB

2.62 GB

Using GParted, I selected the unallocated 94.74 GB of space and created an Extended partitionnot another primary partition. An Extended partition may include as many logical partitions inside it as you wish. I allocated this Extended partitions space as follows:

Partition # sda5 sda6 sda7 sda8

Filesystem ext4 ext4 linux-swap fat32

Label Linux root (/) Linux /home Linux swap (new) HP T OOLS

Size (GB) 15 GB 74 GB 4 GB

Size (MB) 15360 MB 75776 MB 4096 MB 103 MB

Using a Live Linux distro (such as Puppy), copy the original les from the HP T OOLS partition from the USB thumbdrive back to your newly created /sda8 partition. 7

Dual-Booting Windows & Pardus on HP Mini 210

2.2

Background Information on Hybrid ISOs

Beginning with version 2009.2, Pardus switched over to using hybrid ISOs. This hybrid ISO functionality allows users to either burn the .iso le to CD / DVD or copy the content of the ISO image directly on a formatted USB stick, without the use of external USB creator tools such as UNetbootin. The hybrid ISO feature was present in all major Linux distributions, except Debian and Ubuntu. (It was missing from all Debian-based distributions because it would break Jigdo downloads). Ubuntu will begin using hybrid ISOs in June 2011, with the release of Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot). The Pardus 2011 .iso can only be handled with Isowriter or Mandriva Seed; you cannot use UNetbootin. Also, please note that only the Pardus 2011 32-bit .iso can be installed on the HP Mini 210. Its current lename is Pardus-2011-i686.iso.

2.3

Installing Linux

Since the Mini lacks an optical drive, the most convenient installation medium is a USB thumbdrive / ash drive. To boot from your thumbdrive, you will need to temporarily change the netbooks BIOS settings. Follow these steps: 1. Insert your thumbdrive into a free USB port. 2. Reboot the computer. 3. At the HP splash screen, press the ESC key and hold it down. 4. From the menu, select the option F9 -- Boot Device Options. Press the F9 function key. 5. Under the Boot Option Menu, highlight the option labelled UFD -- USB Flash Drive. 6. Press the Return key. The netbook should now boot from your thumbdrive. Install Pardus 2011 from a USB thumbdrive which has been prepared beforehand with the Isowriter utility. There is a detailed tutorial available on the Pardus Wiki: http://en.pardus-wiki.org/Pardus:Installation2008netbook 8

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The Wiki provides three different methods of preparing a bootable, formatted USB stick: For Pardus users Use the Isowriter utility (after installing it from the pardususer.de repository). For Linux and Windows Use the Mandriva Seed utility. For Linux Use the dd command from the Konsole / Terminal. The GUI tools are easier to use, of course, so you will probably have better luck with them. The Pardus installer6 worked awlessly on the HP Mini. It correctly detected the default screen resolution (1024 x 600) and had no problems with the integrated Intel video. It also immediately detected my Logitech M305 wireless USB mouse. Since I had already set up my partitions with GParted, when YALI reached the partitioning section of its installation routine, I selected the Custom Partitioning option. Allow Pardus to install Legacy GRUB (0.97) to the MBR of your hard drive (/sda). It will detect the Windows 7 operating system and present you with three Windows choices in the main GRUB menu: sda1 (which correctly boots Windows 7 Starter) sda2 (which is not bootable) and sda3 (the Windows Recovery Manager) Hint: I recommend not booting up the Recovery partition. I wanted to conrm that it was bootable, so I started it up one time. Once I veried that it was working, I exited without making any changes. However, I have been unable to reboot into it since then; I get a Disk Error message.

YALI, Yet Another Linux Installer.

Dual-Booting Windows & Pardus on HP Mini 210

3
3.1

Post-Installation Conguration
Initial Update

When you have completed your installation, you will add user account(s) and run the Kaptan Desktop Assistant to choose your default mouse behavior, theme, wallpaper, etc. Next, it is recommended that you use the PiSi Package Manager to do an initial update of packages on your system. In my case, I installed from an older Pardus 2011 .iso (downloaded in January 2011). When I ran the update, 269 packages were updated, with a download size of 331 MB. (If you have an average-speed DSL connection, it will take a while for the download to nish). The update included a new Linux kernel (2.6.37.6) and a newer version of KDE (4.5.5). However, everything went smoothly and I experienced no problems. I was unsure whether the Minis WiFi would workand we do not have a WiFi network set up at homeso this rst update was performed via a wired Ethernet connection. If you have access to a wired connection, I recommend that you use it for this step. We will discuss the wireless connection below in Section 3.2.

3.2

Broadcom 4313 WiFi

To my surprise, the Broadcom BCM4313 wireless LAN controller worked out-of-the-box. There are several packages which are installed by default in Pardus to support this hardware item,7 and although I am unsure exactly which ones accomplish this magic under the hood, I am grateful it is such a painless experience. Apparently this model of HP Mini ships with a few different wireless chipsets. To pinpoint which chipset you have, you can issue these commands from your Konsole (Terminal): $ lspci | grep -i wireless 01:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01) $ lspci -nn | grep Network
The packages are b43-firmware, module-broadcom-wl-userspace.
7

b43-fwcutter,

module-broadcom-wl

and

10

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01:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4727] (rev 01) $ lspci | grep Broadcom 01:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01) To use your WiFi connection (identied by Pardus as eth1), look for the Network Connections applet in the lower right-hand corner of your kicker panel. (It is right beside the Battery Strength indicator). Click on it, and then click on the Manage Connections button in the dialog box. After clicking on the Wireless tab, nd the Scan button on the righthand side of the window and click on it, as shown in Figure 5 below. (I tested the WiFi at our neighborhood Burger King, which was the nearest wireless network I knew of). To see details (in list form) on these networks, choose the View: Details option as shown in Figure 6. It presents a summary of the networks name, signal strength, type of encryption (if any) and MAC address. There is also a map-type display available under the View: Map option as illustrated in Figure 7. This Map view provides an indication of WiFi signal strength by showing the strongest signal(s) as located closest to the computer icon. Before actually connecting to the WiFi network, Pardus will ask you to type your (user) password. Once you have done that, you will see a summary display like the one shown in Figure 8. If you want to see more technical details about the active connection, you can click on the Show More button. The Network Connections manager will then display information such as the IP address, the MAC address, and connection speed as well as a color graphic of network trafc. Figure 9 is a screenshot of this window.

3.3

Synaptics Touchpad

Although Pardus correctly identied my Synaptics touchpad, I have not been able to get it working to my satisfaction; it is jumpy and erratic. However, this has not been a major issue for me because I prefer my Logitech M305 wireless USB mouse. It not only allows me ner control but is more comfortable to use. If you want to experiment with conguring the touchpad, you can do so via Pardus System Settings: go to Start (the Pardus leopard icon in the 11

Dual-Booting Windows & Pardus on HP Mini 210

lower left of the kicker panel) > Computer > System Settings > Hardware > Input Devices > Touchpad. Have fun using Linux on your HP Mini (Figure 10)!

A Typeset with LTEX and its hyperref package on the HP Mini 210 netbook.

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Dual-Booting Windows & Pardus on HP Mini 210

Figure 4: The HD partitions after defragmenting and shrinking (as shown in Windows 7 Starter).

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Figure 5: Scan to nd available WiFi networks.

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Figure 6: The Details View of the Network Connections applet.

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Dual-Booting Windows & Pardus on HP Mini 210

Figure 7: The Map View of the Network Connections applet.

Figure 8: Summary display of the WiFi connection. 16

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Figure 9: Technical details display of the WiFi connection.

Figure 10: You can register your netbook with the Linux Counter to make Tux happy.

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