Vector 5.8 standard does not have an automated installer. You have to manually install it to your machine.

For a pre-configured install package you need to create a root partition about 2.4 GB and a swap partition around 512MB minimum.

You have to manually create the partitions using cfdisk. Once the partition is created you have use the Write command in cfdisk to actually create the partition. You maybe prompted to reboot after this process. I suggest you reboot to finalize the disk partition(s).

Once the partitioning is done you can proceed to actually install the distro to the computer.

The whole installation takes about 15-20 minutes. Newer machines may take less time.

I think this distro is worth the effort. The interface is nice and the base installed apps are OK. It works with my Netgear power line network adapters so that I can access my broadband connection from almost any room in my house.

I think that the manual disk partitioning is the greatest barrier to popular adoption of this distro by Linux users. I do not recommend dual booting this distro with Windows on a shared hard drive install. Vector and Windows should have there own separate hard drives for maximum computer stability.

That's just the slackware installer and vector is based on slack. fdisk and, to a lesser exrent, cfdisk, are not that easy to use but that's all that's available with the slack installer. To get around that problem there are many livecds out there that have gparted, an excellent Partition Magic clone that make partitioning from within a gui much easier:

http://partedmagic.com/

Rather than struggling with cfdisk or fdisk, I'd recommend using gparted from a livecd to create your partitions prior to doing a vector or slackware install. Then you can just install on existing partitions.

Also, there's nothing wrong with installing vector, slack or any other linux distro on the same drive as your windows install. People do it every day. However, unless you are very familiar with fdisk and cfdisk, I would not attempt to resize and parition your windows hard drive with those tools. However, you can do it fairly easy with gparted. Back up your data first and do a defrag of the windows drive before attempting to resize your windows partition. Although fairly safe, partition resizing is the riskiest operation with any partitioning tool. Once you resize your windows drive to make room for your linux install, you can partition the free space on your windows drive to receive the linux partitions necessary for your install.