Linux Mint Forums

Hi,

I have been trying unsuccessfully to install Linux Mint for the past couple of days.
First I tried to do a dual boot with Windows 7, but that ultimately failed because my laptop doesn't support LBA mode. (An HP NX8220)

So then I thought it's no great loss, I'll just use Mint4Win and save myself some hassle...
Well, I managed to get Mint4Win to install ok (using the run as administrator with Vista SP1 compatibility trick described in another thread)

However, when I try to boot it, it failed with an ACPI error followed by:
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount to root fs on unknown-block(104,1)

If I reboot and select the safe boot mode for ACPI support it gets a bit further but still fails with the same Kernel panic error.
I've been doing some searching, and I think it might be a problem with mounting the installation iso created by the Mint4Win installer.
I've checked the MD5 of the ISO that I downloaded, and it's ok. I can also boot the CD as a live CD (without any ACPI or Kernel panic errors), so I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

What else could be going wrong?
Any suggestions for a fix?
Thanks,
James

I've fixed it!
After a bit more searching I found a few people that had the same problem with Wubi for Ubuntu, and their solution was to do a Disk Cleanup and Defrag after the install before the first boot.

That seemed to do the trick for me too.

This happens when Windows doesn't unmount the hard drive correctly.
Booting into Windows and shutting down properly should fix it.