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I have a Windows 7 and I want to setup Ubuntu dual boot with Windows.

I have 200 GB of Freespace and want to use that for my Ubuntu installation. I am manually selecting the partitions by following this link - https://medium.com/linuxforeveryone/how-to-install-ubuntu-20-04-and-dual-boot-alongside-windows-10-323a85271a73

However, after creating a partition on the freespace, the rest becomes unusable. enter image description here

How can I fix this?

Here we can see the whole space as free. freespace

SyncMaster
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    I suspect it's because the disk is MBR and you've reached the limit of 4 primary partitions. You might consider going back and creating /dev/sda4 as a single extended partition within which you can create logical partitions for your installation. See related partition created to install Ubuntu appears as “unusable” – steeldriver Jul 10 '21 at 21:22
  • If you have an MBR partition scheme this is a good time to format the disk and cleanly install modern operating systems. Windows 7 needs to be replaced. It has been EOL for a long time now: it has well known security vulnerabilities that will never be patched which makes your system a flashing target and leaves you wide open to all sorts of bad things. If you format the disk you can use the GPT partition scheme which will not have the partition limitations of MBR – Nmath Jul 10 '21 at 21:41

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You've clicked the "free space' and hit the little "+" button, to add a partition there, yes? DO NOT click "New Partition Table", that will torch your entire system, you don't want that - instead, click the "free space" line, and then use that little "+" to create your partition.

If your disk is an MBR it'll tell you that you can't use the space because you can only have 4 primary partitions, or that option will be greyed out. That's a limitation of MBR, and if your Windows is old enough then it defaulted to MBR.

If the disk is NOT an MBR partition table format, then the icon and button should work and it should then ask you to create a partition there. Mount point will be / and your filesystem type should be ext4 for it to work properly for Ubuntu. Then it should install there.

Thomas Ward
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