How to dual boot Ubuntu and Windows Vista

Q I have Vista Home Ultimate installed and would like to dual boot with Ubuntu 7.10. An article on apcmag.com makes it appear straightforward, and up to the point of shrinking the Vista partition this is the case. I now have 62.76MB unallocated space. Rebooting with the Ubuntu CD starts off OK - it loads Linux and starts loading Ubuntu - but after a short time the screen becomes incorrect and then goes blank with the CD stopping. The only way I can reconcile the situation is to turn off the machine and turn it on again, rescuing the CD before it boots. The answer to the problem is, no doubt, very simple. Can you enlighten me?

A Your problem is not unique: the same happened to me when installing on an oldish Fujitsu Siemens laptop. However, other systems also displayed a blank screen for a while before proceeding with the boot, so you may just need to leave it a minute or two. Either way, this is unconnected with your use of Vista. Note, though, that there's no need to resize your Windows partition: the Ubuntu installer can take care of that - although you should first defragment it in Windows. If waiting doesn't work for you, you need to use the Alternate CD, which uses a text installer without the Live CD desktop. Although the installer is text based, the installed system still has a full desktop. This is sometimes needed when the Live CD cannot handle your graphics hardware. The text installer also allows a few more choices than the Live CD and generally has a higher success rate.

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