Look for something that deals with boot options it is often under advanced bios options. The start up screen will usually tell you what to hit to enter set up. Most computers get into the BIOS by hitting the DELETE key during start up. Set your computer BIOS to boot from the CD drive as the first option.

Even the programs like Partition Magic give you this warning. Although unlikely, it is possible to lose data. If your drive is very fragmented, you may want to defragment twice. Once you have your CD, you are ready to begin.īefore you start- it is recommended to do a disk clean up, get rid of unnecessary files and defragment your hard drive to create as much continuous free space as possible. Check your CD burning software for info on burning an ISO. Download the ISO and burn it to a CD as an ISO image. These directions will assume you are using Simply MEPIS. I recommend Simply MEPIS 3.3, available here. Once we create the space for Linux, we can actually format it as a Windows partition, either NTFS or FAT32.įirst, you need to download the Linux live CD.

Every Linux CD includes a program to resize your Windows partition to make room for Linux because Windows usually takes up the whole hard drive.

Don’t worry you are not actually going to install Linux. It uses a Linux live CD to boot your computer and prepare for a Linux installation.