Linux Mint Forums

I'm trying to dual-boot an old Gateway netbook. This one has Vista, 2gigs memory, 250gig hd, and 1.4 gig processor.

I downloaded and burned a Linux Mint 14 xfce 32 bit dvd (verified with md5sum). I chose the xfce version because it says it has minimal graphic requirements, and this box has very little video memory.

I booted from an external dvd drive. Mint starts, it gets my wireless, everything works, so I select Install. I let it decide how to split the disk - it keeps about 2/3 for Vista - and tell it to go ahead and repartition the drive. It starts, and then after about 10 minutes of no visible activity, I get this:

Resize operation failure
An error occures while writing the changes to the storage devices. The resize operation has been aborted.

I tried this twice with the same results both times. There doesn't appear to be anything in the BIOS that needs altering - it's just that Mint can't partition the drive for some reason.

What should my next steps be?

Boot the install media, open Gparted from the System menu, and check that the vista partition does not have a yellow triangle with a ! inside it. If it does you should use a windows install cd to chkdsk it. I also recommend defragging windows partitions prior to re-sizing.

In general , it is probably better to manually set up partitions on the drive prior to installing or leave empty space and let the installer use that, for some reason it seems to work better .

Also make sure you direct the installer to installl grub to the MBR of the drive and not one of the partitions.