How to install Windows 7 alongside Ubuntu 14.04

Question

I am currently using Ubuntu 14.04 and I need to install Windows 7 as dual boot (not VM). How can I do that? Should I create a partition with G Parted for Win7? Need advice from someone who did this successfully.

Answer 1

Yes, you have to create a separate ntfs partition for Windows and it should be a Primary one(if your disk has MBR partition table) through gparted.

Run Windows installation disk and select custom option to install Windows on created ntfs partition.

To create a separate ntfs partition from /dev/sda1

• Boot Ubuntu installation disk and click on try Ubuntu option on startup.

• Open gparted partition editor from dash. If the program is not installed by default then run the below commands to install gparted.

  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get install gparted
  

• Make sure that all the partitions are unmounted. Now right-click on the /dev/sda1 partition and select Resize/Move option to reduce it's size(actual space needed for your Windows).

• After the above operation, an unallocated space will be created just below to /dev/sda1

• Create a new ntfs primary partition from that unallocated space.

Answer 2

I did it, but with some little problems. So I did the resize thing from Live CD, worked perfect, I've installed Windows 7 and then I've rebooted. And here I encountered a problem, my laptop was booting directly to Windows. So again back to Try Ubuntu and type this on terminal:

 sudo mount /dev/sda1 /boot 
 sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install grub-pc 
 sudo grub-install /dev/sda 
 sudo umount /boot. 

It didn't worked perfectly, but this tutorial saved me. Now I have dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 7 and it works just fine!