Can't install 7.10

Nevermind, I just figured out what I was doing wrong.

BUT, I still want to know the answer to my dual-booting question.

You have to boot your computer from the cd. First reboot. Start BIOS settings utility (usually by pressing del on a desktop or F2 on a laptop, there should be
a message telling you what to press). Find the setting for "boot sequence" or "first boot device" or something like that. Change the setting boot from cd rom.
Use your hard drive as the second boot device. This way your computer will boot from the hard drive when no bootable cd is in the drive. Now save the settings (usually F10 or use the menu) and reboot with ubuntu cd in the drive. If you downloaded the live cd version of Ubuntu then it will boot ubuntu and you will be able to try it without changing your hard drive in any way. You can also install it but you should have an empty disk or at least one empty partition in your hard drive or you should know a way to create one without loosing your data, I can help you with that but it's not 100% sure you won't lose everything on your disk :-). If you have a partition free then click on the install icon on ubuntu desktop and follow the instructions. Be careful to use the empty partition when asked. Hiding ubuntu will not be easy as it will need some space on your hard drive and it will be noticeable (Why doesn't your dad want ubuntu?). Things can go wrong so be careful

Sage, of course you can do dual boot. and if you do not modify anything inside the window$ partition *like deleting the windows folder or so... you wont have problems. So go on. And read, because there are lot of guides out there by the community

Installing Ubuntu has nothing, nor will ever have, to do with the current state of your Windows installation. It doesn't even touch it, nor bother more than a little about its existence. So yes, installing Ubuntu won't make Windows reflect any changes apart from a loss in disk space used up by Ubuntu.

However, be careful partitioning your drives, backing up all data before attempting to do so. Don't end up erasing the entire Windows drive or such. Best practice would be to empty your last partition and delete it into free space and then use the free space up in Ubuntu's Manual Partitioning.

Also, about your Dad finding out, Ubuntu installs a GRUB (Boot Loader) which appears at the beginning of your Computer's boot up procedure. There, it clearly would show Ubuntu's been installed (It actually asks for a choice of choosing Ubuntu or XP to boot up from).

So I'd suggest you talk your Dad into letting you install it first, it shouldn't be a big job, simply make him understand the goodness of linux. Sites like http://www.whylinuxisbetter.net will help you with that.

Forgot the dual booting question :-). The only way ubuntu will be visible is by a menu at start up letting you choose which operating system to boot (it is called grub,it's a boot loader). You can still setup grub to show up only for 1 second and then boot windows so it will be almost invisible unless you know that you have to press the arrow key.

jimmykarily:

It's not that my Dad doesn't want Ubuntu, it's just that he seems to think that I will screw up my PC beyond repair if I even do the slightest thing to it, and nothing will convince him otherwise (I've tried).

anyway, I have a new problem now. When I try to boot the CD, it just says "Error Reading Boot CD", tells me to reboot, and does the same thing over and over again until I finally give up and just boot with Windows.

I get

7fcd991b697f38568df51bea86e55861 ubuntu-7.10-desktop-i386.iso

Seeing as I don't see that on the list, I'm going to go redownload it..

Thanks jimmykarily, that solved my question.