Upgrading from Daryna to Elyssa on Dual Boot Laptop

[Guest]

I hope i am posting to the right forum for this. Here is my situation:

I am dual booting Drayna and Vista on a Dell Vostro 1500 laptop. I want to upgrade to Elyssa without ruining my Vista installation. I would think it would be just a simple matter of wiping the Drayna partition and installing Elyssa, but the install cd does not seem to give the option of deleting drayna partition and installing over that. i tried deleting that partition from my vista partitiion in the past but that killed any ability to boot to either partition. Is there a simple way that i ma overlooking?

[Fred]

Guest,

You are trying to make a simple task difficult. Just run the Mint 5 installation program. When you get to the partitioning part choose manual. Assign your new installation to the partitions that are now occupied by your current installation. The installer will take care of the rest.

Fred

[Guest]

when i try that it shows whole drive as one partitions as if it does not see the vista partition. i fear it will overwrite it.

[Meteor]

"I hope i am posting to the right forum for this. Here is my situation:

I am dual booting Drayna and Vista on a Dell Vostro 1500 laptop. I want to upgrade to Elyssa without ruining my Vista installation. I would think it would be just a simple matter of wiping the Drayna partition and installing Elyssa, but the install cd does not seem to give the option of deleting drayna partition and installing over that. i tried deleting that partition from my vista partitiion in the past but that killed any ability to boot to either partition. Is there a simple way that i ma overlooking?

This was posted by "Guest" and it relates to my situation, although I have never seen vista run let alone have it on my computer. I have a Gateway Laptop running PCLOS and have Daryna in a partition. Daryna does not appear on Boot, I just go right into PCLOS. I'm not really a fan of KDE and, after a few months, am now looking to move back to Mint. Unfortunately, I have some ongoing situations in PCLOS that need to be completed before I can retire it completely.

The response to "Guest"s" question, of course, centres on vista. I've tried to install Elyssa (Main) over Daryna by choosing the partition (hda6 - ext 3, in my case) and telling Elyssa to work with it. She doesn't. I'm just left sitting looking at one of the partition screens.

My question is: how do I install Elyssa in my hda6? All of Daryna should still be there and (IMHO) it should be easy for Elyssa just to tell Daryna to leave the premises and then install herself. Obviously, I'm wrong...

I figure someone will ask, so here is the way the Partition program tells me my hard drive is set up (GB numbers are rounded):

/dev/hda1 - ext 3 - 8 GB with a "boot" flag indicated
/dev/hda2 - extended - 70 GB divided into the three following "drives" (for lack of a better word...):
hda5 - swap - 4 GB (didn't realize it was this big but I guess it's OK. Hasn't hurt anything in the past 15 months...)
hda6 - ext 3 - 33 GB (this is Daryna's current home)
hda7 - ext 3 - 33 GB (this is PCLOS with a boot flag indicated)

As it is a 100 GB drive, the remaining 22 GB is "unallocated". This information is taken from Elyssa's "Computer" icon when using the Live CD.

As there are two "Boot" flags, I guess I should somehow delete the one in hda7 (if it can be easily done) and tell Elyssa to use hda1 for the MBR. I will then need to edit GRUB, I guess, to dual-boot...

Sorry, that makes two "situations": o how to install Elyssa?
o how to make my computer dual-boot properly?

Absolutely Confused,
Meteor

[Meteor]

Guest,

You are trying to make a simple task difficult. Just run the Mint 5 installation program. When you get to the partitioning part choose manual. Assign your new installation to the partitions that are now occupied by your current installation. The installer will take care of the rest.

Fred

Just some more re my message above re replacing Daryna with Elyssa, I tried doing a "manual" partitioning but the installer just hung. I finally, after about ten minutes or so, just cancelled it and came here to the forum to seek advice.

Meteor