Vista - Dual-boot Ubuntu

I have Vista Home Premium 32-bit on Dell Inspiron 6400

I want to have a go at installing a dual-boot Ubuntu 9.04

Why? "Because it's there!"

I've experimented with Wubi, which is dual-boot Ubuntu 9.04, but does not need it's own partition. (This allows a painless evaluation of Ubuntu. Clever idea!)

I would be most grateful if anyone could recommend some do's and don'ts. (BTW: I have complete Genie backups of my system files and data files.)

I intend to follow the instructions at the following two links:

The definitive dual-booting guide: Windows 7, Linux, Vista and XP step-by-step

Ubuntu:Intrepid -

My overall impression is that the commonest problem is that users can no longer boot to Vista after installing Ubuntu. IMHO, users get problems if they do the following:

1) Shrink the current Vista partition.
2) Create a new partition in the free space, to be used eventually for Ubuntu.

It's step 2 that seems to cause the problem. Alternative advice, such as in the two links that I quoted above, say that you should do *nothing* with the free space. You should allow Ubuntu to do everything itself.

I would be grateful for any comments?
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I already tried out SUN's Virtual Box here and no go for simply trying to get older versions of Windows running with that as one item seen in the article there. For seeing the Vista primary reduced in size not more then 15gb to 20gb since ubuntu is small to begin with for a Linux distro the free Gnome Partition Editor generall known as GParted live for cd is the choice tool for both shrinking the Vista primary down and creating the new VFat ext2 or ext 3 primary(root) for ubuntu.

The option for a second extended swap partition is just that an option while not being a necessity due to Linux having it's own form of swap file. The one thing however to watch out for is not seeing the installation of Grub into the Vista mbr to avoid Grub 14 and 22 errors but making the root the "/" mount point.

From there you can add the ubuntu entry into the Vista BCD with the NeoGrub option seen in the free EasyBCD tool available at Download EasyBCD 1.7.2 - NeoSmart Technologies

The instructions plus other references for that are seen at Dashboard - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki

When first running the ubuntu installer make sure to select the manual method and select the root partition. Later hightlight that and click the edit button to assign that as the "/"" mount point so you don't see the installer decide to reformat and partition the entire drive for Linux only! You want to see the root set as mount in order to have the NeoGrub pointed to that in order to see ubuntu load as an option when Vista first starts.