[ubuntu-uk] Some installation pointers please

[David Goldsbrough]

My experience of installing Ubuntu is limited to either a full install on a
virgin hard-disk or into a Win XP environment.

I have been helping a friend recently with problems on their HP 64bit AMD
laptop regarding user profiles, corrupt registry and AVG.  Long story,
short - all is now sorted.

Being an evangelical Ubuntu user, after them using a spare Ubuntu  12.04
LTS machine of mine and a quickish tour around a live CD plus some rather
nice textbook I picked up for a £1 I convinced them they should at least
have a duel-boot machine.

I downloaded and burnt the 12.04.4 iso 64 bit version.  I then proceeded to
install but it bombed out having chosen for it to install itself alongside
Windows.  I thought it would simply find the Windows partition and roughly
half the available space still left on the drive.

So, I tried again thinking I would choose the third and final option of
"Other" thinking it would simply allow me to manually partition.  As I
type, I am now working from my recollection - the machine is now some
distance from me.  I seem to recall there was a coloured graphic display (I
am colour blind) showing the existing partitions - but I can't recall
exactly how many it showed - but my friend suggested there were only 4
different colours - that might be wrong.  Below that, was a table
describing it would seem the size of the partitions and the free space
available.  I seem to recall there was /dev/sda but with no size info
against it.  Below this there were 4 indented descriptions; /dev/sda1,
/dev/sda2, /dev/sda3. and / dev/sda4.  Three of these were described as
NTFS and one FAT32.  Can't remember the sizes, but I'm guessing the largest
was the one with Win7 on it.

At that point, I had no idea what to do and was not confident that no harm
would take place if I proceeded.  So, I aborted the installation.

>From what I can recall, Windows and the machine seemed to have the
following partitions
* where the windows original installation files were
* where windows was installed
* an HP partition for something or another
* and another which I can't recall.

When I used a USB stick at one point it was allocated G: Drive so I'm
assuming the others mentioned above were C, D, E and F (not necessarily in
the same order above) - four in total.

I have been reading http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Multiple_OS_Installation and
other references.  If I understand correctly there is a maximum of 4
partitions allowed on a hard disk.  But I am utterly confused as to how to
proceed.  It is very important no damage is done to the windows
installation - far too much investment has taken place in terms of time,
customisation, software installs etc has taken place.  The data is safe on
sticks or in the cloud.  There is also a Ubuntu reputation issue I believe
- I have convinced my friend Ubuntu is so easy and simple compared to Win7.

Being a great believer in the adage "you mustn't do anything that can't be
easily undone" and you must always have a credible reversion plan, I would
welcome both a forward strategy and some detailed pointers on how I should
proceed to achieve a duel-booting machine.
Many thanks in advance.  Sorry about the long post.
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