How to: Dual boot Vista + Ubuntu 8.10

I see a lot of times, sprawled around on the internet "the safe way" to installing Ubuntu on a Vista PC as a second OS. There is no right way really, but there are wrong ways of going about it. This can make sense if you don't think too much in to it...

So, to begin with, you need most obviously, a PC, Vista installed, Ubuntu LiveCD, and a brain with enough capacity to read, follow instructions, and not get too confused.

Before going on to the tutorial I want to explain a few things:

1. Although the LiveCD gives you the option of installing Ubuntu inside Windows, this is not recommended totally. This can cause performance issues with both operating systems and it may just be easier to manage giving it its own partition.

2. Testing the OS on your computer first will tell you if there are any drivers that you need before installing the OS, start playing around with it and realise it won't work %100 because that can be annoying. The auto-run program should load once you have inserted the LiveCD into your disc drive. After this has done there should be an option called umenu.exe and once the Ubuntu Menu has loaded there is an option called Test or something like that. It gives you a brief description of what it is, I'll confirm this to you to try avoiding uneccessary confusion - but it won't be word to word.

"Run Ubuntu from CD without installing" basically...


3. If your computer came with a pre-installed Operating System and recovery disc then there will probably a partition on Disk Management called WinRE or something. Do NOT delete this as you won't be able to recover your Vista partition and all shall be lost... If it's not called WinRE, then maybe something similar, also it won't be that large of a partition because it only has the OS files. Nothing else.
If you're in doubt, get back to me on here providing me with a screen shot, a little information about the partitions on your computer and I'll let you know.

So onto the tutorial!

Follow this by clicking:
Start Menu -> Computer -> (right click) -> Manage (Management (one of them)) { You should get that Security Feature pop up thing here - Click "Continue" } -> Disk Management.

Your partitions' information should show now, right click the partition you want to resize and click Shrink, a box should pop up for you to enter the amount (MB) you want to reduce the partition.

You should probably also make a Recovery Partition about now if you don't have one. If you don't know how to do so, I'll be covering this in a later tutorial.

Put the LiveCD in, press F12 to enter the boot menu, boot from CD, follow the guides on installing the OS, it should be done sooner or later.

When you come across the partition manager on the LiveCD, this may be a bit hard for you to understand. I actually very nearly messed up too. But you should get there. Just make sure you read everything properly!

That's basically all there is to it for dual-booting a PC with Vista already on it. But also make sure you follow the guides properly, because I nearly messed up here making the Ubuntu partition and nearly used the whole drive.