PcWorld offered Wubi Ubuntu Installer which I download and ran Wubi connected to the interenet and installed Ubuntu. Ubuntu is now in a separate directory. There were no "Readme? files so I do not know what to do next. Trying to open a file with Windows My Computer does not work as most files are unreadable by Windows. Suggestions welcome to develop a dual boot system with Windows XP.
Bill

Ok.
I suggest that you learn how to re-partition your disk.

Gparted live is a good choice.

Do you know how to use this?

I also suggest a live cd of ubuntu for installing.
A live knoppix cd with ntfs 3g for safe resizing of the nt partitions on your box.

You now need to ask:

How do I use Gparted? Knoppix? Safely resize ntfs partitions? Use the ntfs toolset that comes with knoppix?

How do I use the ubuntu live cd installer?

Sorry Mr-Bisquit, but in the current case your advice is unfortunately wrong.

The main source of information is the wubi site itelf on http://wubi-installer.org/

Wubi is a new implementation of the old concept of having Linux installed on a Windows system with unchanged partitions - the ancient version was named win4linux or something like that (haven't used it since over a decade). The old concept worked by launching a startup executable where all control is taken away from the running operating system (CPU super user conditions, memory cleaned, etc) and Linux is booted. Wubi appears to install a boot manager launched at an early Windows boot stage, but otherwise accesses data from the unchanged Windows partition in a similar way. Wubi keeps most of the files in one folder, which takes ca. 5 GB disk space.

When you reboot the computer after installation you can choose to run Windows or Ubuntu - a boot manager should show up, if installation was flawless.

Thank you MrBisquit and maresmasb. I agree with the latter that reapportioning is unnecessary. I had visited wubi-instiller and read their articles. I downloaded Wubi and ran it which downloaded Ubunti which was then installed (an an,almost two hour project. The computer, a Dell laptop by the way with 29g of hard drive space available, rebooted. There then should have been further Ubuntu processing and another reboot, after which the boot selections would be available . But, were no further processes and the normal windows screen appeared. Entering the Ubunto folder, no .exe files would activate.

This process was done twice.

I then visited Microsoft Forums, "How to Try Ubuntu" where I was directed to download Wubi again and then to download the Ubunto program, both to the same folder. When Wubi was run from this folder, it again wanted to download the Ubuntu program from the internet rather than process the downloaded file in the same folder.

New questions: Can Wubi be run from the current folder where it and Ubunto reside without going to the internet? Or, is there a way to force the further processing after the first reboot of Wubi. I still have a backup Ubunto folder (694 mb) from the last December's attempt to install Ubunto -- can something be done from this folder? I also still have a Ubunto folder from 4:34 this morning, 13.7 GB

any suggestions would be appreciated.
Bill

Hi Bwatkin4,
I installed Wubi on someone's computer about 6 months ago so I don't know if things have changed or not. From what I remember, you didn't run any wubi programs from windows. When you reboot you should have and option of booting into windows or into ubuntu. If you choose ubuntu then you can use that operating system and do the usual stuff. AFAIK you can't run anything from windows.
cheers,
jdk