Ubuntu Installation Problems

First things first, I would like to apologize for my being retarded. I'm trying to install Ubuntu for a dual-boot system with XP Home, but when I run the automatic partitioning wizard on Ubuntu it does nothing. I let it sit over night (about nine hours) and nothing happened. I don't have any partitioning software for Windows and I don't really want to spend any money on it, either. I only have a single partition on my hard drive. Can someone help?



CPU-Athlon 64 4000+
Motherboard-Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe
Hard Drive-WD Caviar SE 250GB SATA
RAM-PQI Turbo 1.5GB

Use the manual partitioning feature?

First make sure u defrag your other operating system before you resize because that is what you will need to do.Anyway afterward when installing the operating system, and during the installation make sure u select Custom partition, then do it manually. However becareful coz you might loose your data, if you think you have done something wrong, you can always undo, or cancel to avoid saving changes.After the installation is done, you will get some other window showing you progress, and that will include the MBR settings.Pass through them and see,it will give option of your other operating system, so u can edit it.If you don' t have any operating system and its a new installation, make sure you install windows first,then Ubuntu last, it will automatically set the MBR for dual boot..Wish u luck.R

What types of partitions do you have? This usually occurs because the partitioning process hangs. I've seen this a few times when installing Ubuntu. If you have any other old Linux partitions from previous installations, remove those completely first and convert them to one large FAT32 or NTFS partition. The set up should then have no problem erasing them and reallocating them. Otherwise just boot from the livecd and use gparted to manually partition.