Installing Ubuntu alongside Vista

If you value your Vista installation and your sense of calm I’m giving you a warning.  If you are going to install Ubuntu in a dual-boot configuration, just to be on the safe side, install it on a different hard drive and disconnect every drive but the one you are going to be installing Ubuntu on.  If you are really unlucky like I was, GRUB will overwrite the Vista bootloader to the point where the recovery tool on the Vista DVD will not be able to find your installation.

If you have SATA hard drives this is a simple process – you just pull cables out of the back of your Windows drive before turning the machine on.

Once you’ve booted the live CD, installed to your new hard drive and restarted, you can plug your Windows drive back in.

In Windows, install a program called EasyBCD here and use that to add Ubuntu to your Vista bootloader.  Sometimes Vista will detect and mount the new linux drive automatically, but you may need to do it yourself, before EasyBCD can find the right linux files to boot.  I haven’t done this myself yet, I press F8 on the POST (Power On Self Test) and choose the drive I want to boot into.