Dual boot on XP

Burn a live CD. Boot from live CD and then click in "install Ubuntu". At some point it will ask you for "partitioning", make sure that you don't use the "whole disk" but only a part of the empty space. Usually it gives you pretty good instructions during the partitioning process.

There is also very good HOW-TOs, eg

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot

YES U CAN DUAL BOOT IF REQUIRED OR USE ONLY UBUNTU

Bernhard. Thanks for the info needed to check first whether or not I need to change file format on the partition for linux and do I need to aprtition for the swap file before install. Already have new CD tried this about 6 months ago with another version of Ubuntu and ended up with all sorts of incomaptibilities with the XP installation and gave up but back again and just want to make sure that I can avoid the same problems.

Get a new Cd from

http://www.ubuntulinux.org/getubuntu/download

as it will have a lot of the upgrades that have happened since then. Also if you have any problems try asking us quickly as we have a great team in here answering questions at the moment but we tend to focus on the newest problems as the arise. This link helps you install Ubuntu properly rather than inside Windows which often seems to be the cause of problems in Ubuntu

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootFromCD

Skim read quickly through Bernhards and/or my link before you start so you have some idea what is likely to happen.

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/dualboot

You'll notice that there is a partition editor included in the installer and it has some nifty default settings for helping set up a dual-boot. I tend to prefer setting up my partitions in advance and then use the "Manual" partitioning rather than "Guided" partitioning in the installer - this is a bit more technical and have to remember to set the Ubuntu partition's "Mount Point /", the / is the root of the file-structure in linux. Also going this route it's advisable to use another distro as a LiveCd in order to do the partitioning as the Ubuntu LiveCd doesn't have a gparted that can understand ntfs partitions. i tend to use Wolvix whenever i need a LiveCd
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=wolvix

Anyway, good luck and have fun
Regards from
Tom :)

If you are still having trouble with this then please post it as a new question. Only the most recent questions tend to get looked at so posting/re-posting a question just before america arrives online after work/school gives the best chance of getting a good few answers - such is the nature of the internet.
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+addquestion

If the problem has been resolved then please follow the link to the forum thread and mark it as Solved but please give us a clue how you did manage to solve it and also use the button under where you type stuff in rather than giving me karma credit points for just sending this note to you.

Apologies, good luck and many regards from
Tom :)