Hi, my laptop has Ubuntu 12.10 as the only OS installed on it. I would dearly love to do a complete reformat so I can install Win7 then dual boot with a Linux distro. Can anyone help?

Also, not sure if relevant but I have set the BIOS to boot first from a USB then the CD drive before booting from the HDD but for some reason it won't. It always goes straight to Ubuntu.

I'd be tearing my hair out if I had any left

All help appreciated,
thanks

Downlaod the Distro Gparted and burn it to a CD Rom.
The change boot order to. first boot CD Rom.
With Gparted you can delete and format the HDD.

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If you just install MSWin, it'll reformat the disk for you and take over the entire system (it doesn't like other OSes).
Then you can use the MSWin tools to shrink the partition to add the Linux afterwards.

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I don't know where people got the impression that Windows will always take the entire HDD for itself. Part of the Windows installation routine is a partitioner, where you can delete the Linux partitions (or any other partitions, FWIW) and setup a partition for the Windows version you want to install. That partition has not to be the size of the whole disk, you can without a problem use a smaller partition and just keep the rest of the disk unpartitioned, so that you don't have to resize partitions later.

GParted eventually worked. Thanks everyone for the advice

I found that what you said "does not like other OS's" is exactly the case.

Are you now in a 'dual boot' ?

no, not a fan of windows. have installed wine so i can play skyrim

Oh, ok so your distro, Ubuntu 12.10 is stable and all is well now?

I checked out skyrim; neat!

MS taking control and the line
" We are the microsoft . Resistance if futile , your own unique ...... "
is from the XP days ( even then there is a ,and rather well hidden, already checked check box to install to the whole drive .If you uncheck it you can install to only a partition )
but it is pre checked "for your convenience "

the win 7 installed dose have the option to select where to install win 7
though i think it is buried on a submenu .


though i think most people just assume MS will " borg" the system , because that is the default settings

if you the user do not check things , do not make sure that it is doing what YOU want it to do
and do not do your " do diligence " and CHECK things before you say "YES" to EVERYTHING

then bad things WILL happen !