Now that I have finished trying Ubuntu, I wanted to install it on my machine. I read all the installation guides I could find and shrunk the volume of Windows on the hard drive. As I tried to load either 12.04 or 12.10, I am coming up against something that is not talked about in the guides. When I get to the Installation Type page, instead of saying that Windows 7 is also installed, would I like to install ubuntu along side (as the guides say), I get "This computer currently has multiple operating systems on it." I don't have multiple systems on this laptop. My options are Erase disk and install ubuntu or Something else. When I go to Something else and see the Device for boot loader installation, which should I pick? I have sda, sda1, sda2, sda3, sda4 and an unusable. The unusable looks like the space I freed up on the hard drive for ubuntu. Here is what I see:

/dev/sda ATA Hitachi ser no. (500.1 Gb)
/dev/sda1 Windows 7 (loader) ntfs 208mb 69mb used
/dev/sda2 Windows 7 (loader) ntfs 254861mb 85979mb used
unusable 219909mb
/dev/sda3 Windows Recovery Environment (loader) ntfs 20865mb 18595 used
/dev/sda4 fat 4260mb 3107mb used

The sda2 is the volume I shrunk in windows. Will Ubuntu let me use the unusable mb because that is the free space I gathered to put ubuntu on it. Should I load Ubuntu on sda2 and then will it use the unusable space to load the distro?
It does not look like any of the partitions are extended. Here is the output

Partition ### Type Size Offset
Partition 1 Primary 199Mb 1024KB
Partition 2 Primary 237Gb 200Mb
Partition 3 Primary 19Gb 442Gb
Partition 4 Primary 4063Mb 461Gb

Any help will be appreciated.

Actually, yes you have. It looks like you have at least a Windows installation and a recovery partition, which also contains an OS.

But your real problem is that you have 4 primary partitions, which is the maximum you can have on a disk using the old DOS partition tables. You can have more partitions with removing one of the primary partitions and creating an extended partition. Extended partitions can contain a larger number of logical partitions, so that you will have enough partitions to install Ubuntu.

If you don't want to repartition the disk you can alternatively use Ubuntu's Wubi feature, which installs Ubuntu in a container file on the Windows disk or just use a virtual machine.

I don't mind repartitioning the disk to install Ubuntu. I shrunk the Windows volume so I could make room to install Ubuntu. It shows the space as free but unusable when I try to load Ubuntu. Should I go back and unshrink the volume and make an extended partition on it? Or, what is the best way to go about manipulating the partitions? If it comes down to it, is the Wubi feature done in Windows in an explorer pane or from the install Ubuntu?

This isn't related to your problem, but I have the same laptop, HP 2000 416-DX (you can check the exact model number in the case under the battery.) So, as you're just now installing Ubuntu, be sure to install with a wired internet connection. This model uses Broadcom STA drivers for wireless, which are not included on the CD versions. I'm not sure about the DVD versions. Just a friendly heads-up.

It looks like you have two very large partitions, I assume that one is your Windows installation and one is a data partition (most likely D: in Windows). The solution would be to backup your data, remove the data partition and create an extended partition. In that extended partition you can create a new smaller data partition and leave some unpartitioned space for Ubuntu).

Regarding Wubi, the installer should be available as soon as you put in the CD/DVD in a running Windows.

I looked into removing the data partition, but it says it is the recovery files and that I should not delete or alter the files or partition because I may not be able to recover the system in the future. The other smaller drive is the HP Tools and it has folders labeled BIOS, BIOSUpdate, QuickWeb, System Diags and a file named HP_WSD.dat. I shrunk the C: drive to make space. I have unallocated space. I tried to make a new simple volume to create an extended partition on this space, but I receive this warning, "The operation you selected will convert the selected basic disk(s) to dynamic disk(s). If you convert the disk(s) to dynamic, you will not be able to start installed operating systems from any volume on the disk(s) (except the current boot volume). Are you sure you want to continue?" What does this mean? Can I continue? Also, in the wizard to create the simple volume, I gave the new drive a designated letter but I chose not to format it. Is this correct? If I get this to work and Ubuntu loaded, won't it format that portion for itself?

As I stated before, regardless if you have unallocated space or not, you can not have more than 4 primary partitions on a disk with MBR partition scheme. You have to remove one of the primary partitions to create an extended one.
If you change the partition scheme to dynamic (some kind of Windows LVM) it will render your Windows system (and the recovery partition) unbootable and you will still not be able to install Linux, since linux currently does not support Windows' dynamic partitions.

Your best bet, if you don't want to remove partitions, is going for Wubi or using a VM.

So, I made a recovery disk and moved my HP Tools to a new folder under C:. I have one disk on this computer. I then removed 2 primary partitions. With the space I created a D: drive which was labeled as a logical partition. I then loaded Ubuntu. It did give me the option to install alongside Windows. It asked if I wanted to put the boot loader on dev/sda. I read somewhere not to do this. So with my free space, I created a sda5. The installer said I needed a root directory. So I made sda5 the root with an ext3 filesystem. It then told me I needed a swap space. So I created a swap space as sda6. It then let me install Ubuntu and I used sda5 to put the bootloader. It seemed to load ok, but when I rebooted, it came up to Windows. I do not get an option to pick my OS. When I am in Windows, it sees C: only with the amount of space I shrunk it to.
Apparently I have done something wrong, I just hope it is not irretrievable. Any ideas or suggestions on how to fix this? Do I need to provide more information?

Actually, the right thing to do would have been to install the bootloader to /dev/sda. You can fix that like described here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Gr..._Broken_System