How to install Linux Mint with Windows 7?

Ignore the talk about separate boot, home, swap, etc, partitions, you only need a / and a /swap, and the Mint installer will take care of that. Your partitions will be listed by the installer as /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2, etc. sda is your first, and if I understand you correctly, your only hard disk. /sda1 would be the first partition, sda2 the second, and so on. You only need to know which partition is your empty one. It should logically be sda2, however, Windows 7 creates a 100mb partition containing boot and recovery info, plus your computer may have a recovery partition from the factory. The Mint installer shows size, so be sure to choose the right partition (judge by size, buckle up;). The installer will do the rest. Your bootloader goes on /dev/sda, no partition, just the root of the drive. The bootloader will automatically be set up to let you choose between Mint and Windows on boot.