17.1 Installer Error - Win7/8 Boot Loaders?

[benzo0986]

Hi, let me preface my post by saying that I have done tons of googling and searching for solutions and I keep running into similar situations but there seems to be no single solution. Some people have had success with some solutions and others still fail. So before I start a checklist and spending all night going one by one through the solutions I thought I'd ask the experts in case it's somthing simple I'm missing due to my ignorance of the Linux OS.

[b][color=#BF0000][u]Issue: Live Mint 17.1 Installer Crashes during install process[/u][/color][/b]
I successfully created a mint bootable USB and after trying a few different bootable USB creation tools was able to create one that worked (I now have two due to troubleshooting, both functional one UnetBoot and
one universaUSB).

I get to the live mint environment and run the Installer.

I choose the option to install mint alongside my windows installation as I'm not familiar with Linux and it's partitioning requirements.

I set the Linux partition to 100 GBs and the install process begins(I've tried with and without networking, same result). It gets about 75% of the way through the process and then crashes. The error prompt talks about
reporting the error to someone and it seems to be a pretty clean error to be perfectly honest if that even exists lol.


[b][color=#4000FF]Troubleshooting[/color][/b]

- Re-downloaded the iso and created new bootable USB disk
- Attempted install with NO network connection, failed, same error
- Deleted partitions and attempted to install with larger sized partition, failed, same error
- While looking at gparted I can see that what I assume is the Linux partition was actually created during the failed install but I can't boot into Mint, which brings up a question: When I had OpenSuse/Win 8.1
dual-boot working smoothly it always booted into Grub2 which let me choose whether I wanted to boot Win 8 or OpenSuse. After failed Mint install, even though I can see the created partition AND can see all the
files when I am in the Live USB Mint environment, I get NO Grub2-like boot manager upon system start. Is Mint supposed to use something similar? Does it use Grub2?
- I read online while doin some research that mentioned something about needing to disable Windows 8.1 hibernate mode (the feature that allows for fast booting) so I went into Windows 8.1 power options and I
disabled hibernate. However, I also saw mention that to FULLY remove it you have to delete a file that is stored somewhere and this seems to be backed up by the event where once I booted into Unetboot boot
manager and selected the option to load Mint 17.1 x64 and received an error which mentioned the Windows 8 hibernation mode. I'm going to check it again and make sure it's disabled but I'm pretty sure I DID do
this already.
- I read during research that you are not supposed to shrink the Windows partition, however, there is a slider during the mint install that allows you to allocate how much of the HDD you want to share between the
pre-existing Windows 8 partition and the installer created Mint partition. Is this considered "shrinking" the WIn partition? Could it cause issues?

[b]>>> fdisk -l console readout[/b]
[b] Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System[/b]
/dev/sdb1* 2048 1753992796 876995374+ 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdb2 1753993214 1953523711 99765249 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 1753993216 1936754687 91380736 83 Linux
/dev/sdb6 1936756736 1953523711 8383488 82 Linux swap / Solaris

[u][b]>>> Mint Installer Manual Partiioning Readout[/b][/u]
[b]Device Type Size Used System[/b]
/dev/sda
/dev/sda1 ntfs 500104 MB 300195 MB Windows 8 (loader)
/dev/sdb
/dev/sdb1 ntfs 898043 MB 573672 MB Windows 7 (loader)
free space 93575 MB (Deleted Linux partition created during installer failure)
/dev/sdb5 swap 8584 MB 0 MB (Also created during failure, not sure what this is for...)

I also have a storage HDD (/dev/sda) that I only use for storing docs, software, whatever. It seems I have a Windows 8 boot loader on my storage HDD(sda) AND a Windows 7 boot loader on my main
Windows 8.1 HDD(sdb, the c:\ drive mentioned previsouly). I'm wondering if this may be causing issues, having two Windows loaders on two separate HDDs....

I used to have OpenSuse 12.3 installed, as well as Grub2. I decided to uninstall. Being impatient as I tend to be I rushed the procedure. In Windows 8.1, I used the Disk Manager to delete all of the
partitions that weren't used for Windows 8 and you can guess that I deleted Grub2. I assumed that Grub2 was somehow installed in the MBR and not in a partition I could not touch in Disk Manager. So
when my comp rebooted, with Grub2 and all Linux partitions deleted, I couldn't boot into Grub2 and therefor ANY OS. I used a Windows 7 install disk to get to a command prompt and repair the Windows
MBR. My Win 8.1 booted up fine and all was well I assume it's all okay at this point. I thought this might be why I have two windows loaders on two separate HDDs but I remember clearly that when I had
the OpenSuse/Win 8 dual boot running smoothly, when Grub2 booted I had two Windows 7 options in the menu along with OpenSuse. Not sure why both of them said Windows 7 when I had Windows 8
installed though.

[Mark Phelps]

I read during research that you are not supposed to shrink the Windows partition, however, there is a slider during the mint install that allows you to allocate how much of the HDD you want to share between the
pre-existing Windows 8 partition and the installer created Mint partition. Is this considered "shrinking" the WIn partition? Could it cause issues?

Yes ... there have been numerous issues where shrinking Win7/Win8 OS partitions using the installer results in Windows filesystem corruption, preventing booting back into Windows to fix the filesystem problems.

You should ALYWAYS use Windows utilities to shrink Win7/Win8 OS partitions, not Linux utilities -- to be safe.

[benzo0986]

Ah okay, well I managed to get it installed regardless. So I did a couple of things differently to get it installed and I'm not sure exactly what made the difference but for people who end up here looking for answers to the Installer error problem the solution in my case was to do the following:

1. Boot into Mint Live with USB stick
2. While in live environment download whichever distrobution you'd like to install as ISO.
3. I used UnetBootIn to create a new bootable USB drive on a different thumb drive.
------- In my case, the Bootable USB I created in Windows 8.1 with Universal USB Tool would boot up live mint but the installer crashed no matter what I tried
------- SanDisk Cruzer 32GB(Booted to Live Mint Environment, Installer Crashed) - Created in Windows 8.1
------- SanDisk Cruzer Switch 8GB (Booted to Live Mint Environment, Installer Successful) - Created in Mint Live Environment
4. Unetbootin manager booted up successfully
5. Booted into Mint Live
6. Made sure that all previous partitions created during a previous failed install were removed and the HDD only had 1 partition.
7. Ran installer, selected to install alongside Windows


Is there anyone who can tell me about the issue I still have with my multiple Windows boot loaders? I have Windows 8.1 installed and usable. The HDD that contains my c:\ drive shows as having a Windows 7 bootloader. The HDD I use as storage only shows as having a Windows 8 boot loader.... Is there any way to tell which loader I am actually using to boot into Windows 8.1? Can I safely delete one of them? I'd like to get rid of the Windows 7 loader if possible to eliminate confusion upon boot.

[caezsar]

This is odd because Linux Mint automatically detects all your other preinstalled systems and configures the grub to show them. Try to use this guide http://www.bytelinux.com/linux-mint-17- ... procedure/ , maybe it helps you! Also...does your machine comes with UEFI?