Thank you for the tip. But my mind is still set on doing a "normal" installation. So the question remains, will it risk messing up my windows 7 bootup? My catiousness comes from having the Daz loader stuff, since that one uses Grub, doesnt it?
if its using bootloader and in easybcd u write win7 mbr (and add grub2 linux ).. on next reboot daz bootloader is gone so is activation = reinstall loader after all done.
I placed the linux boot files in the /boot partition, installed Linux Mint. First boot went straight into win7 (obviously) and then I added and entry for grub2 with easybcd. That gave me the dual bootchoices, and I never lost the activation.
if you mess up boot of windows 7 you can allways boot into repair mode(install dvd/USB) run terminal(cmd) and run bootrec.exe /fixmbr and that is the way to uninstall / delete linux partitions.