Clueless Newbie seeks help

[DocMesa]

Hello, Minty people

I'd like to broaden my IT knowledge base a little and I'd like to get Linux Mint with MATE running on my new desktop. The system is something like this:

C: SSD drive, about 256Gb in size, currently houses Windows 7.
D: A blank 500Gb HD, I'm hoping to turn this into a dedicated Linux disk. That way, when I inevitably do something dumb, my Windows 7 OS won't be affected
E: 1TB HD, home to an uncomfortably large number of Steam games.

Here's where the problem lies:
- I burned the 64 bit version of Linux Mint onto a DVD, ran the Mint4Win.exe file, which asked for a destination drive, size of install and a user name.
- I installed it and rebooted when prompted and it loaded into the Linux Mint log-in screen
- After entering my username and p/w, the screen goes black for a handful of seconds before returning me to the log in again.

After numerous uninstalls and reinstalls, each with the same problem, my D: drive has vanished as a boot loader option, despite having what I assume is an installed version of Linux on it.

When I found my way onto the BIOS screen, it turned into a bewildering mess of options about UEFI, Legacy stuff. I've heard that UEFI can mess with boot loaders and things like that but I don't know what I'm doing with regards to changing settings. How do I reconfigure my BIOS settings so that it gives me the option of choosing where to boot from and how should I partition the D: drive so that it works properly with Linux?

Just to reiterate - please, please, please keep it simple - I'm okayish with computers but Linux is unknown waters to me.

[viking777]

Mint4win installs mint as an APPLICATION inside windows (which is not on your d drive). It does not install Mint. If you want to install mint as an application inside windows (which I don't recommend, but some people want to do it and it is your choice) then you will have to point it at the C drive not D. If you want to install mint on the d drive then forget everything about mint4win. I can see how you might confuse this issue, but mint4win does not install mint.

Uefi is a bona fide nightmare to which there is no answer. It may work for you or it may not, it is purely down to luck (or actually what firmware you mobo has). You can only try it and find out. The best advice seems to be to switch it off in the bios (if you can, some can't, like me).

Your Windows installation will not be compromised in any way unless you mistakenly install Mint to your C drive and wipe it out. It should be fairly obvious which is your C drive and which is your D drive because D is twice the size of C and half the size of E. Linux does not use the C,D,E convention, it will probably call your drives sda, sdb and sdc.

Just to reiterate mint4win has nothing to do with properly installing mint - forget about it. And switch off Uefi and boot/install in legacy mode. There is a fairly good tutorial here about Uefi and Linux: viewtopic.php?f=42&t=121912. This person is using a usb stick to install, you don't have to do that because you have a dvd, but do make sure that your computer boots from dvd before hard drive, this is important. Also you don't have to have the same partitioning scheme as he has, I would suggest a / partition and a swap partition on the 500Gb drive and use the 1Tb drive as /home.