Hey there, we'll be installing Ubuntu on your system through dual booting. This blog article assumes that you currently have a system running Windows and you want to install Ubuntu alongside your existing operating system.

Let's get started...

Dual booting with Windows

Note: These steps have been tried for Windows 10, but might work for 7 and 8 as well.

Downloading stuff

1. Go to Ubuntu's website and click on download (or click this link) and then download the operating system image that you want to use. For this tutorial, we'll be using Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic Beaver). Wait for the download to finish.
2. Download a tool that will help us create a bootable USB. I'd suggest you download and install rufus for this purpose.
   • Next, you'll have to create a bootable USB. You can check out this document for steps to do that.

You now have a USB drive that has the ISO image of Ubuntu. We'll use this bootable USB drive to install Ubuntu.

Preparing your system for dual boot

Here, we'll prepare your system to dual boot and install Ubuntu alongside windows. It's assumed that your system is running Windows 10 (7 or 8 may also work).

Creating space for Ubuntu

We'll first create some empty space to install Ubuntu on your system

1. Run the app "Disk management", you could alternatively search for "Create and format hard disk partitions" in start menu or control panel.
2. Do this step only if you have three or more partition volumes (like C:, D: and E:). You'll have to reduce everything down to two partitions. This is mainly because the MBR file format supports only 4 partitions on the disk.
   • I'd suggest you move everything from E: to D:
   • After everything's done, your computer might look something like what's shown in Figure 1 below
3. In the Disk management app, you'll see something like what's shown in Figure 2 below. You might see only C: and D: or only C: as well. That's no problem.
4. Right click on E: and then click on Delete Volume (Figure 3 below). If you have only C: and D: or only C:, you can shrink volumes as well.
   • In the end, you'll see "Unallocated memory" (Figure 4 below). This is the space in which we'll be installing Ubuntu
   • If you want, you can shrink or expand other volumes and adjust things to your liking.
   • It's suggested that you save at least 100 GB if you're planning to use Ubuntu for some important work, but remember that this is the amount of space that the entire operating system would be installed in. Different requirements require different storage.
   • You must have a segment of "Unallocated memory" after all this is done.

We've created space for Ubuntu, now time to change some settings, particularly, the fast startup mode needs to be disabled

Changing power settings

1. Open Control Panel > System and Security > Power Options which will open a window like Figure 5 (scroll down)
2. Click on "Choose what the power buttons do", a window like Figure 6 (scroll down, you'll probably have "Turn on fast startup" option enabled) will open where you'll see options that are disabled for editing, click on "Change settings that are currently unavailable" and uncheck the "Turn on Fast startup" option.
3. After everything's done, you'll see the end result like Figure 7 (scroll down).
4. Save settings and exit the application
5. Reboot system and check the "Disk management" app still shows the "Unallocated memory" and the power settings are as we had set them.
   • It's suggested that you have a look at your boot options key while booting, this will be require later. It's shown when the system is booting, for HP systems it might look something like Figure 8 (scroll down)

Now that you've finished all this, your system is ready to install Ubuntu. Until here, you must have the following:

1. Ubuntu bootable USB drive
2. Unallocated memory on the system and the proper power settings as described before

Everything's ready, let's start the main installation

Main installation

Perform the following steps:

1. Shutdown the system
2. While the system is OFF, plug in the bootable USB drive into a USB port
3. Boot the system and press the hotkey to select the boot menu immediately after the power button is pressed
   • On HP laptops, it's the ESC key. You can find hotkeys for other systems here or the datasheet of your system / motherboard.
4. After that, select the option to select the "Boot Device" (usually F10)
5. You must see a list of options here regarding your Hard disk and there must be options for your USB drive as well
   • If you have Windows installed on a Legacy platform then select the USB drive option which has Legacy before it
   • If you have standard UEFI, then select the UEFI option bearing your USB's name
     • You can know weather your windows installation is Legacy or UEFI by selecting the option with your hard disk name and seeing which one boots into Windows. Go to step 1 of this section after that. Most of the times, it's legacy.
   • At the end of this, you must have selected the bootable drive with the right firmware option
6. You must see the installer run after this asking you if you want to Install or try Ubuntu. We're going to Install it so click on the "Install Ubuntu" option.
   • At this point, you can check the official installation document (the following steps will have a similar layout with slight but significant difference).
7. Choose the installation option (Figure 9) and click next
8. The installer must detect the existing installation of Windows 10 on your hard disk and prompt you to install alongside it. The screen must look like what's shown in Figure 10.
   • If you don't get this option, you probably chose the wrong option among Legacy and UEFI in step 5, exit installation, shutdown and try again (go to step 1).
9. After that click on Continue, then the installer will prompt telling you that it'll install Ubuntu on a disk partition. This is the "unallocated space" that we had created earlier.
10. Select you location (Figure 11) and create login credentials (Figure 12)
    • It's suggested that you keep the names short and set a strong but memorable password
    • Don't use spaces in names. It's allowed but will give you headaches later.
11. Click "Continue" and the installation will do everything in the background
12. After that, you will be asked to reboot. Click the button to do so
13. When you boot, a screen will open to select the operating system you want to boot into. This is the GRUB bootloader of Ubuntu. Select Ubuntu option and boot into it.

That's it! You've successfully installed Ubuntu on your system.

Additional

Frequent Problems

Date and Time issue on Windows and/or Ubuntu

As described here, Windows and Ubuntu read time differently from the hardware clock on your motherboard. This causes one to set parameters that the other operating system doesn't understand or parse correctly. Luckily there's a simple fix for this in Ubuntu / Linux. Open terminal and run the command timedatectl set-local-rtc 1 --adjust-system-clock

This ensures that Linux parses the time correctly, now boot into both the operating systems one by one and fix time by syncing them through the internet clock or manually.

Accidentally removed the bootable USB or Installation failed

• You can boot into Windows and open "Disk Manager".
• See if the space is still visible as "Unallocated memory".
  • If it is, then create a new volume and delete it again. This will recreate the unallocated memory
  • If it isn't, then delete the unlabelled volume and recreate the unallocated memory.
• Follow the steps after we created the unallocated memory