my laptop has Vista loader on it?

Good sirs. I was attempting to put a 2nd operating system on my Win7 laptop, when all of a sudden, I was horrified to see the information in my attached photo. Now what should I make of all this? The laptop was bought from Best Buy with Win 7 installed. Am I seeing a Vista upgrade and not a fresh Win 7 install? Does that make it less stable? I am certainly having problems with the shift keys on my keyboard, which is why I was trying to install Ubuntu until I got a good answer about how to fix my Windows problems... My drives are labeled C: local disk 447 GB D: recovery 17.9 GB E: HP_TOOLS - 99 MB if I try to use the recovery drive (which looks to be Vista) won't I just ruin my Win 7 install? And should the GeekSquad fix anything about this for free? Thanks for any info.

How many partitions/ OS do you have on the computer? WOW

There is an advance option in the menu. It will allow you to select which partition or drive to use.

Are you familar with linux drive reference? Your best bet is to check the ubuntu forum.

Some of the early OEM windows 7 installs used the vista bootloader. If best buy upgraded your computer to windows 7 and didn't provide you with a windows 7 disk, that's pretty shady. Especially if they put a windows 7 sticker on it.

What I would do in your situation is run the factory system recovery, and if vista ends up being installed, go back to the store where you bought the computer, acting extremely irate, and demand either a windows 7 disk or a refund.. then take it home ..wipe the HDD and do a clean install. Don't finish the ubuntu installation or you won't get anywhere with them

sounds like a plan thanks!

Just as a sidenote...
Hey MadTownIdiot... I want the image you used in your sig. TOO funny and yet, horribly true. LOLOLOL

madtownidiot said:

Some of the early OEM windows 7 installs used the vista bootloader. If best buy upgraded your computer to windows 7 and didn't provide you with a windows 7 disk, that's pretty shady. Especially if they put a windows 7 sticker on it.

What I would do in your situation is run the factory system recovery, and if vista ends up being installed, go back to the store where you bought the computer, acting extremely irate, and demand either a windows 7 disk or a refund.. then take it home ..wipe the HDD and do a clean install. Don't finish the ubuntu installation or you won't get anywhere with them

PeaB4YouGo said:

Just as a sidenote...
Hey MadTownIdiot... I want the image you used in your sig. TOO funny and yet, horribly true. LOLOLOL

hope you get you're problem solved.. keep us posted.. having taken a closer look.. I can see that best buy did indeed upgrade a factory installed vista system to windows 7 but didn't change the recovery partition.. take it back to the store
also do a google image search for "too many toolbars" and get one that's similar

I would shrink my windows 7 partition, but from the picture, it looks like 450 of the 500 GB are used by some phantom version of Vista.

I just don't know what to do other than go fuss at the Geek Squad until all the partitions say Windows 7.

Mark Phelps said:

From your screenshot, it looks like your plan is to use the Ubuntu installer to shrink your Win7 partition to make room for Ubuntu. Do NOT do that! There have been lots of reports in the Ubuntu forums of folks ending up with unbootable Win7 setups after allowing the Linux partitioner (GParted) to mess with their Win7 partition.

Instead, use the Win7 Disk Management utility to shrink the Win7 OS, leaving unallocated space. Then, boot into the Ubuntu installer from the CD, and use the "largest free space" option to allow it to partition the free space and install.

I've used to gparted numerous times in the past 6 months to shrink a windows 7 partition in order to install ubuntu and never had any of that happen