Help!! Dell ins. 1564 partition problem

[Chetan1991]

I've screwed up my laptop . Please help.
When I bought my dell inspiron 1564, its hard disk came pre formatted in following setup:
part.(ition) 0 100 mb boot, part. 1 30 gb empty, part. 2 30 gb empty n part. 3 240 gb empty.
I also have an old P4 machine running xp. On it I had could partition the hdd any way, no hassle of primary or extended partitions.
No such luck with the laptop. It wont let me create more than 3 partitions (apart from the boot one which i'm not sure is safe enough to be deleted or not).
Whenever i try to make more than 3 part.s, the win 7 setup says i can't make more than 4 primary part.s , but it wont even create any extended part., instead when you click on extend, it just , well extends the size of selected part.n
This thing bugged me so much that I fiddled with Disk Management utility of win 7. I had already shrunken the largest part.n to 200 gb. I made the unused space a "simple volume"(know nothing about it).
The utility said it would make all the part.s simple (there was something "dynamic" also there, can't remember).
Unfortunately I didn't marked any part.n active, supposing windows'll take care of that.
After a reeboot windows 7 isn't loading. I ran elive livecd and checked the hdd in GParted and it shows
Windows_c unknown file system 992 kib
Windows_d ntfs 100 mib
Windows_e ntffs 29.2 gib
Windows_f ntfs 268.8 gib

Earlier it showed (from my memory, so not everything might be true)
Windows_c ntfs boot 100 mib
Windows_d ntfs primary 30gib
windows_e ntfs primary 30gib
Windows_f ntfs primary 200 gib
unused space 39.5 gib
Now I dont know what to do. If it had been my older rig i would have simply wiped off whole of the hdd. but with that tiny 100 mb part.n idont know what'll happen if i delete it.
I also want to dual boot (windows 7 & linux distro) n keep atleast 2 other part.ns for other stuff. What am i to do??? Should i delete the tiny part.n?? (I think that part.n is called boot part.n. Thats wierd cos earlier the boot sec. Of active part.n did it all. Right?) HELP!!!!

[azaad_shri75]

no you can't delete the tiny part, as its win7 way of installing, it needs 100mb partition-which it creates it self and keeps certain boot files there, first delete all partitions and create fresh- and yes it would not allow to create more than 4 partitions - this thing is real crap from win 7, so what create 50gb partition and install win7 and let it create 100mb as per its need and after installation, go to dis management and create fresh partitions from there and leave the rest fr the linux..........anyways which linux ? and what is your sys config?

[Chetan1991]

Configuration:
core i3, 4gb ddr3 ram, 1 gb ati m. R. Hd 5450 n 320 gb 7200 rpm hdd (gparted shows 320 gb n 298 gib. What's the diff bw. Gb n gib btw??)
about distros.. I'm new to linux n have never installed one (live cds only) but i'm influenced by the FOSS philosophy.
I've tried out many distros. I think i'll install ubuntu studio or something similiar.

[azaad_shri75]

ok its a new lappy, did it not come with os loaded, ok what ever dont install linux as of now on your lappy, first learn it by installing on your desktop, understand its ins and outs,

there is no difference in gb and gib - its just the the different way of calling......
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibibyte


now are you able to form partitions as I said.........
or use gparted to make partitions............

320 gb means you would only get 300gb usable space.......

[Chetan1991]

Nope. It was an n series laptop, Without win 7.
Where does the 20
gb go??
By installing on desktop do you mean installing as an windows app??

[azaad_shri75]

not as windows app- how is that possible? dual boot it windows or if you have spare drive install on it and use for time being- till you get acquainted with it.........

[Chetan1991]

It is possible. Ubuntu lets you install it as an app on windows using wubi.
So now i understand the gigabyte and gibibyte concept. Giga is the scientific prefix giga (10^9) and gibibyte is 2^30 bytes but we mistake giga for gibi.