Hi there! Welcome to the forums. :)
I've tried to reproduce your partitioning situation in a virtual machine, so I can go through the Kubuntu installer myself and see what options I would pick in the same situation.
Just before I run through that walkthrough of how I would approach this install, here is how I would set up the bootloaders in your situation (I actually have a triple-boot Linux, Windows Vista and Windows XP machine, so I have achieved this is a slightly different, but similar setting).
Linux leaves the Windows bootloaders completely alone. Instead, it installs its boot loader
before the Windows bootloader. So what you will have if you want to follow my walkthrough is this:
- First bootloader -- select either Kubuntu Linux or Windows
- If you selected Kubuntu Linux, that boots straight away
- If you select Windows, you then enter the Windows bootloader and select either Windows 7 or Windows XP.
This is often called 'chainloading'. The Linux bootloader only knows enough to boot the Windows bootloader, which is then responsible for picking the right copy of Windows and booting that.
With that in mind, here is my walkthrough for what I would do to make this a reality.
First of all, if you run the Windows application on the Kubuntu CD from within Windows, that will always offer to install Kubuntu alongside Windows, on the same partition (it's a technology called
Wubi and it's great, but not what you want to do here).
So you absolutely do need to reboot the PC and boot it directly from the CD to enter the 'real' Kubuntu installer.
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At this screen, I recommend you choose
Try Kubuntu without installing. As counterintuitive as that sounds, you can still run the installer fine from this mode and it gives you the flexibility of loading a complete desktop session so you can use any other programs on the Kubuntu disc you might need before or after the installer is run. Now, you have to wait while the OS boots from CD and the full desktop session is finished loading.
Once the desktop arrives, click the
Install Kubuntu 10.04 shortcut on the desktop.
Go through the Language, Timezone and Keyboard stages of the installer as you would normally.
When you get to
Disk Setup, the installer will offer one or more automatic choices, including
Erase and use the entire disk and possibly some other options (which might even sound like they are the 'right' options). I suggest that whatever comes up, you choose
Specify partitions manually - Advanced since your setup is more complicated.
The
Prepare partitions screen is now a lot like Disk Management in Windows, it's just some of the terminology and notation is different. On my VM simulating your disk layout, this is what I see. I hope this should mostly match up with the choices you get (I only cheated the sizes on disk 2 to save myself space, and obviously there's no data on my VM!):
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What you need to now is instruct the installer to use each partition that you want your new installation to make use of, and leave the other ones alone. Notice the
/dev/sdxy layout.
x is a letter denoting which physical disk this is referring to, and
y is the partition number. Notice how it jumps from
sda3 (third primary partition on disk a) to
sda5 (first logical drive on disk a), as logical drives are numbered from 5.
First, click the entry for
/dev/sda3, which is your LINUXROOT partition. Click Change and choose
Ext3 journalling file system under
Use as (you could also use the newer Ext4 and there are a multitude of other filesystems you can use, but Ext3 is perfectly adequate and very stable). Tick the box to format the partition (of course, making sure there's nothing on that partition you want to save!)
Because this is your LINUXROOT, the mount point should be
/. Click OK.
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The mount point of
/ should now show up in the table.
Now address
/dev/sda5 in the same way, clicking on it and choosing Change. Once again, I'd recommend Ext3 Journalling. Set the mount point manually to
/home and, again, choose the box to format the partition if that's appropriate.
The Linux swap partition can probably be left as is; Kubuntu should intelligently make use of any swap that is available once it is running, so if the Linux swap partition is already formatted as swap, you can leave that.
Verify that none of your Windows partitions have a mount point or are set to be formatted (you can configure access to your Windows data from within Linux later). Here's what my table now looks like:
<a class="ipsAttachLink ipsAttachLink_image" href="<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_06_2010/post-1019-12772746066124.jpg" data-fileid="1273">[img]<fileStore.core_Attachment>/monthly_06_2010/post-1019-12772746066124.jpg[/img]</a>
Double and triple check that you're happy with what you're formatting, then go ahead and move Forward in the installer. Finish up the installer by going through the User Info screen as normal.
On the Summary screen, you will get a final summary of the partitioning changes. There's also an Advanced button allowing you more control over the Linux bootloader install, but that should be left as is if you want the setup I described earlier. Once you click Install, the deeds will be done.
Once Kubuntu is installed, on rebooting the computer you will get the Linux bootloader coming up straight away. Windows should have been auto-detected and added as an option to that menu. Choosing that should chainload the Windows bootloader as I explained earlier. Unfortunately, without replicating your setup exactly, I can't be 100% sure this will work, but if the worst comes to the worst...
Rolling back if it all breaks
You should obviously have a backup of everything before doing any of this. That goes without saying when you're modifying partitions, just in case you slip up.
If something goes unexpectedly wrong during the Linux install with bootloading and you can't get into Windows, you should be able to fix Windows booting by following
this tutorial (using the /ALL option).
Once you've got Windows back, you can still use your computer ;) and you can then regroup, find out what didn't work and try fixing Linux booting if you want to.
