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I have a machine with Windows 7 installed. I currently do not have admin rights on this machine.

Will I be able to dual boot Ubuntu with Windows without admin rights?

I wasn't sure specifically if the repartioning of any drives, and replacing the boot loader was allowed without admin rights. I'm assuming not.

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No, you don't need admin rights to modify the disk structure with an independent utility. You would boot a stand alone disk partitioning tool to make space on the existing drive (shrinking the existing windows parition). Then the Ubuntu install can install in to the unused space. Alternatively, if you are using 2 HD's, you can install ubuntu on it. In both cases, after installing ubuntu, you will have grub2 as the boot manager with a new boot menu with both ubuntu and windows as options.

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if you are able to boot from the ubuntu installer cd, none of the windows security features will work. So to repartition the disk etc. no windows-admin rights are needed. But maybe the boot sequence on your machine is changed and you may need a password to set it correctly in your BIOS. Anyway the one with admin rights may not find it amusing to have someone altering his computer?

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  • The user is supposed to have admin right, but currently does not. The admin who grants those rights is unavailable for a few days.
    – Steve
    Feb 29, 2012 at 17:20
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Administrative rights are internal to Windows only. Unless the bootloader itself is password-protected and requires admin rights to boot from another device, you should be fine.

You should consider, though, that "what is allowed" is probably different than "what am I able to do"...

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