would like to create a partition

[i7prince]

What I want to do is have two partitions. One for booting in Ubuntu linux and the original partition which has Windows home premium. How do I do this? And can I read files on the Vista partition from the Linux partition? And how do I, when I boor up the computer, choose which partition I boot from? Is there a boot up os menu that would come up?

P.S. - I have no programming expreience and know little about formatting anything, so please spell everything out if possible. Thanks!

 

[JoeSamo]

Buy Partition Magic or see if they have a free trial for it, otherwise, i think you would have to reformat the entire computer with whatever OS cd your using

 

[phantomofrussia]

well you hit start and then right click my computer->choose manage-> select disk management.

now your going to see some drives there and stuff.
select your partition(that should be named C: ) the selection that i mean is the rectangle named C:.
right click it
select shrink volume.
now for ubuntu you really dont need to a lot of space 10gb should be fine. if you have the room give it more. its really up to you. after that just right click that unallocated space and choose format. remember the letter that gets assigned to that new partition, your going to need it later.
once that is done put in the ubuntu installation disk into your drive.
restart your computer and make sure you boot from the cd. to change the boot sequence so that the system boots from the cd go into your bios and put the cd/dvd drive to boot first.
once the system boots from the cd just follow the installation instructions.
MAKE SURE THAT YOU INSTALL UBUNTU ONTO THE NEW PARTITION. NOT YOUR C: DRIVE!!!!!!

after it gets install change the boot order back to the harddrive first.
there is a boot menu when you have multiple operating systems installed.

too my knowledge you should be able to see and read the files from your vista partition and vis versa.

 

[JTM]

Yeah you can do what is said above, Vista has the partitioning software readily available. No need to buy a third parties software. Just a tip however, when I tried dual booting my XP system w/ Ubuntu it worked great for a little while and then messed up my computer to the extent I had to re-install everything. So be careful with how you do the dual booting.

 

[i7prince]

update

I am needing to partition my hard drive to place either windows 7 or ubuntu. not sure which i'm going to place on now but the problem is this. My hard drive has 87.6 gb free but when i try to partition it either through the vista partitioner or command prompt it only shows about 6 gb free. i'd like to have much more room just in case i want to put on windows 7. any explanations? I just restored my computer to the way it was purchased through the windows restore function built into the laptop.