Skip towards the end (the ~ 7th paragraph) to see only the short version of the question - everything else just describes the situation in more detail (sorry it's such a wall of text).
Hello all. This is my first post on these forums so far. I signed up and posted my situation quickly, and then I'm going to search these forums. There are a couple of reasons why I didn't search these forums first: 1) I may have already searched them and just don't remember (I've been all over the web these last several days); 2) I guess I'm more nervous about the situation - it's not like the computer's going to blow up if the worst case scenario happens - I've done quite a bit of Win OS installs, but I've only done dual boot installs about 3 times I think (2-3 times for sure). My sensitive files and other data are backed up, but it'd still be a waste if I crashed the existing OS just because of a dumb mistake. 3) I'm also wanting to hear from any who've done what I'm going to do and have hands on experience dual booting - installing Kali-Linux on top of the existing OS (Windows10).
The situation is that I have an HP laptop that came with Win7 pre-installed on it (That's what I assume anyway - it's what the sticker shows). I got curious about Linux again and wanted to check it out so I made a Kali-Linux live bootable USB to just check out the OS (it's come a looong way since around '2001'). After becoming sure that I would want to use Kali for maybe a year or more, and that a little flash drive was not large enough to hold all of the files and data that I'm liable to save on it, I decided that I want a dual booting set up on the machine between Win10 (existing OS) and Kali. It just makes sense to me for my needs because I'm going to learn way faster if I consistently boot to Kali and use it often, rather than only booting to the usb for some practice every so often.
I've already attempted installing Kali once, but it did not take due to the partitioning scheme already using 4 primary partitions (it's an MBR-type HDD). I was alerted to that by an popup message during the Kali install's "partitioning" phase (that might not be the exact title of the window that I was on - I know it was either just after or shortly after the network configuration phase, probably still more towards the beginning of the install.
The steps that were taken to get to the point of the above pargraph were: I shrank the C: from within Win10 using its "Disk Management" prog. The ~ 215GB block of unallocated space was what I was going to dedicate to the Kali-Linux OS (and the other ~ 215GB of free space to Windows). I then rebooted to make sure that all was well and the Win OS booted as it should. I then inserted the Kali live USB drive and rebooted to the Kali boot menu. I chose the graphical install option (I usually just choose the live USB with persistence option when I was just tinkering with it). I thought the install was going pretty well until I was alerted about the 4 primary partition rule (I think I vaguely remember something about that rule now, but it's been too long ago to be sure).
So, where I'm at now is that my single hard drive (HDD) has a partitioning layout that looks like [see dmlayout.png]. The Kali-Live USB boot screen that I boot to looks like [see kllusb.png]. As mentioned before, I usually select the "Live USB Persistence" option when booting to the flash drive, but was going to do the install by selecting the "Graphical Install" option.
Anyway, I've been searching and reading as much as I can find about my situation, and I've learned quite a bit and also refreshed my memory on a bunch of stuff that I was rusty on, except for how to get around that "4 primary partitions already installed" problem. That's how the laptop came from the factory, with the four primary partitions already installed (HP's surely smart enough to realize that a 3 primary partition + 1 extended partition would be a better setup - Hmmm, maybe they want more users to crash their system and maybe end up buying an extra hard drive or something).
Finally, I get towards the heart of the question so that people don't have to deal with a wall of text anymore. anyway, I wasn't really sure in the beginning what my best course of action should be, but now I've decided that (if it'll work) I should probably use a third party program (like MiniTool Partition Wizard) to change the OS (C- 350.37 GB NTFS - Healthy (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition) from a primary partition into a logical partition/drive. Then I was going to reboot Windows10, go into Disk Management and make the now unallocated 215 GB into an Extended partition...
This seems to make the most sense to me out of all of the stuff that I've read so far, except that I'm not sure if changing that OS (C
I've found about 3-4 guides that said this method works without a hitch, but I've also seen in one instance where the guide narrator said to just copy all of the boot files to the primary & active partition so that the Win10 OS would remain bootable? This is also another point where I get confused. I was under the impression that all is fine now, since windows10 boots up now, even though OS (C
So, that's where I'm at now. I'm just unsure of how to proceed because it's been about 1.5 decades since I've had to remember any partitioning rules and I'm also tired from searching the web for anything I can find that's related to my particular situation. The fact that most of what I did find pertained specifically to Windows7 also makes me skeptical a bit, even though there's a Win7 sticker on my machine and I've seen several mentions that the same method works also for windows10.
I guess if I had to sum my question up in just one direct and easy to understand question, it would be, "Will Windows10 still be bootable if I convert the OS (C
AFTERTHOUGHT - I was reading the FAQ's and found that I left out the Kali version. The ISO that I am using is Kali 2017 32 bit (got it about 3 days ago). I believe the desktop is a GNOME architecture (I gather that from what I've read so far, but I could also be wrong).
