I'm trying to install Ubuntu 24.04.2 on my laptop alongside Windows 10 for some practice before I experiment on my main rig. I made a bootable USB drive, and when I got to the disk setup during installation, I noticed I don't have the option to install it alongside Windows. My only options are to erase the disk or perform a manual installation.
I've done a few things to try to resolve this: I disabled fast boot in Windows, created 100GB of unallocated space, and even edited the grub file in the terminal, but that didn't help. I also tried installing Mint 22.1 to see if the option would appear, but it didn't either.
Interestingly, when I booted my main rig into Mint, the installation allowed me to install it alongside Windows without needing to free up any extra space. After looking at my partitions from gparted, I see that I've got:
1. /dev/nvme0n1p1 - 549 MiB, ntfs, system reserved
2. /dev/nvme0n1p2 - 364.89 GiB, ntfs
3. unallocated - 110.64 GiB
4. /dev/nvme0n1p3 - 895.00 MiB, ntfs
5. unallocated - 2.34 MiB
Why isn't my laptop giving me the option to install alongside Windows the way my main rig did? Any advice would be appreciated, especially since I've been stuck trying to figure this out!
4 Answers
I appreciate the tip! I'll give that a shot. I'm also going to double-check what gparted shows during the installation to make sure it recognizes the unallocated space accurately.
Just a quick thought: if that 100GB is a partition, the installer might think it’s used space. You want it completely unallocated for the installer to recognize it. So, make sure you've got it cleared!
It looks like you've done a good bit of troubleshooting already! One thing you might want to try is deleting the 100GB partition you created to ensure it's completely unallocated space. The installer likes it better when the space is truly unallocated rather than part of a partition. It can create the necessary partitions itself during the installation process that way.
Yeah, unallocated means there should be no partitions at all, so the installer can allocate as needed. Good luck! It really shouldn’t be this complicated.
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