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<div class="elementToProof"><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I've just bought a new Dell laptop that has a 1TB drive, 16GB of memory, and has Windows
11 Home edition installed. I booted Windows and shrunk its partition down to about 400GB to make room for Linux. I've done this before on a previous laptop, but I've noticed this time that the C: drive is encrypted with BitLocker, and there are several "Recovery"
partitions. Not wanting to inadvertently trash the Windows installation, I thought I'd ask what pitfalls to avoid.</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br>
</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Presently the drive is partitioned this way:</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">200MB EFI System Partition</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">394.23GB C: NTFS (BitLocker Encrypted)</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">537.11GB Unallocated</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">990MB Recovery Partition</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">19.73GB Recovery Partition</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">1.49GB Recovery Partition</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">15MB Unallocated</span></div>
<div class="elementToProof"><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br>
</span></div>
<div class="elementToProof"><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">When I press F12 at the start of bootup I get the following EFI boot devices:</span></div>
<div class="elementToProof"><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Windows Boot Manager <Default></span></div>
<div class="elementToProof"><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">UEFI RST 2550 Micron 1024GB 2332427B5956</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">UEFI HTTPs Boot</span></div>
<div><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br>
</span></div>
<div class="elementToProof"><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I've booted Linux Mint 21.2 from a USB thumbdrive to check if it would run OK, but didn't
proceed with the install. It did hang when I tried to shutdown. Then when I booted Windows it required the BitLocker key to continue. Once entered, it continues to reboot successfully. (I tried booting Linux Mint again, it came up, but again hung on shutdown.
However Windows did not require the BitLocker key when I booted Windows again.)</span></div>
<div class="elementToProof"><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br>
</span></div>
<div class="elementToProof"><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Hopefully you might understand my hesitancy with proceeding with the install, and so
I thought I'd ask the group for advice for setting up this laptop to dual boot Windows and Linux.</span></div>
<div class="elementToProof"><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br>
</span></div>
<div class="elementToProof"><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Brian S</span></div>
<div class="elementToProof"><span style="font-family: Aptos, Aptos_EmbeddedFont, Aptos_MSFontService, Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><br>
</span></div>
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