Hard drive simply freezes, does nothing when starting Mint
Posted: Sat Jan 19, 2013 1:43 pm
Dear Anyone.
I've never used any version of Linux in my life, am trying to get Mint installed and working on a 40gig hard drive. The idea is, so I can take it with me between computers (work/home) to use a word-processor on and store text documents created with it. I'm HOPING there won't be any probs. porting the drive because I'm only printing out from the HOME computer, not the work one.
Anyway. I downloaded Mint with MATE desktop. (If anything I say sounds odd, remember I'm brand noob new to Linux so might be getting the terminology wrong.) Burned it to a DVD. Installed it on the 40gig hard drive which was in an external caddy. It told me - I think - it had installed correctly.
When I try to boot from the external hard drive, which my BIOS lets me do, nothing happens. The cursor just sits flashing at the bottom of the screen. The screen comes up with all the usual information until it hits the hard drive, which I know for a fact works, then does zip. I've tried reformatting it and reinstalling Linux Mint with Mate desktop - still nothing. I wish I could offer more clues as to what I'm doing wrong, but if I knew that I could prob. fix it myself!
Please, remembering I don't know the first thing about Linux (but am not bad with Windows, but the hard drive I'm using doesn't have Windows on it, it's blank save for Linux) can someone talk me through what I'm doing wrong in installing Linux?
One thing I DO know about Linux, because an older geekier friend told me this once, is t hat it only partially downloads. Most of it is online in things called repositories, am I right? My computer is connected to the internet. I've also read that you have to use a command-line interface a lot to get it going, but I've looked through the files on the hard drive and can't find a CLI, which is prob. because I don't know really what I'm looking for. OK. Once I've found the CLI., what do I do to access the repositories to download the requisite files to make Linux actually work? (Help on finding CLI would be greatly appreciated. As would links to repositories - I've read about them but can't find them online. HOPEFULLY when I find them, something there will tell me what to DO with them....)
Yours hopefully
Chris.
I've never used any version of Linux in my life, am trying to get Mint installed and working on a 40gig hard drive. The idea is, so I can take it with me between computers (work/home) to use a word-processor on and store text documents created with it. I'm HOPING there won't be any probs. porting the drive because I'm only printing out from the HOME computer, not the work one.
Anyway. I downloaded Mint with MATE desktop. (If anything I say sounds odd, remember I'm brand noob new to Linux so might be getting the terminology wrong.) Burned it to a DVD. Installed it on the 40gig hard drive which was in an external caddy. It told me - I think - it had installed correctly.
When I try to boot from the external hard drive, which my BIOS lets me do, nothing happens. The cursor just sits flashing at the bottom of the screen. The screen comes up with all the usual information until it hits the hard drive, which I know for a fact works, then does zip. I've tried reformatting it and reinstalling Linux Mint with Mate desktop - still nothing. I wish I could offer more clues as to what I'm doing wrong, but if I knew that I could prob. fix it myself!
Please, remembering I don't know the first thing about Linux (but am not bad with Windows, but the hard drive I'm using doesn't have Windows on it, it's blank save for Linux) can someone talk me through what I'm doing wrong in installing Linux?
One thing I DO know about Linux, because an older geekier friend told me this once, is t hat it only partially downloads. Most of it is online in things called repositories, am I right? My computer is connected to the internet. I've also read that you have to use a command-line interface a lot to get it going, but I've looked through the files on the hard drive and can't find a CLI, which is prob. because I don't know really what I'm looking for. OK. Once I've found the CLI., what do I do to access the repositories to download the requisite files to make Linux actually work? (Help on finding CLI would be greatly appreciated. As would links to repositories - I've read about them but can't find them online. HOPEFULLY when I find them, something there will tell me what to DO with them....)
Yours hopefully
Chris.