okay, installed with all the right options & it works. Thanks for your help

Okay so Just leave some unallocated space of tge size needed tge option to install alongsode windows will be tgere select that and itll install to the unallocated memory, without touching windows?

Let me check if I have this right. Once i have the USB and disc partition set up boot from the USB & go to the installer. Then select download alongside and chiose tge partition to install linux to?

okay, that’s done. Now what do I do? I am assuming we need to tell the PC to install linyx into that partition (& only that partition without erasing the entire drive)

about 90GB is left on C:\ but I’ll only need 30GB for my linux partition. Besides, I can always resize the partition later, right?

I have a 28GB D drive that seems to be being used for recovery and backups & a 210GB C drive, I could easily free about 30GB for another partition. I have the bootable USB set up.

Yes I have recovered windows & all my files completely now & that USB I used for windows (just bought one big enough for booting) should be able to be used for linux files, I can just transfer them over from the SD can’t I?

Actually It was completely wiped apart from a few fragments in the recovery D: drive & thanks to the disk management system being the worst I have ever seen, it put the C: drive into a 26GB partition instead of the 210GB that its supposed to be in which is now D:

I will try another Disto if I can. I restored windows too. Are there other, safer methods to do this if I only have one SSD. Also, If I do reinstall how do I tell the installer specifically which partition to use