I have a new ASUS laptop that I got from the university. The guys at the computing centre recieved it before me, erased the hard disk, and installed all their crappy software (Novel, outlook, and the like).

I tried to install Ubuntu with dual boot, but because they apparently did whatever it is they did wrong, and the installer does not recognize the existing windows installation and only suggests to install Ubuntu as a sole OS. None of the advices here or here helped. My final decision is to indeed let Ubuntu erase all existing windows stuff (and then use windows occasionally through VirtualBox).

However, when I try to do that it tells me that the partitioning looks like GPT but doesn't have the correct signatures, or something like this. It asks whether this is indeed a GPT HD, and I don't know what to tell it.

What I ask is: should I simply use gparted from the CD to repartition the HD? If so, what would be the recommended partitioning (I have 750GB), and the recommended filesystem (ext3? ext4?).

Update: here's a screen shot

Thanks in advance for any advice.