Got myself in a pickle with Mint

[bbse]

I installed Mint with the Windows installer to check it out. No Problem. I had it on so ling I forgot I had installed it thru Windows. I had a Linux partition from a previous install that was not being used so I later thought that it was installed there. I could never get Mint to see the Windows files to copy data over and I was confused as to why. I finally decided to try a different distro so I installed PCLOS 2010 on the Linux partition I had. Then I had grub, so when it posted it gave me a PCLOS or Windows option and when I went into Windows XP Home, I then had the Mint boot option. It was at this time I realized I had installed it with the Windows installer and it was not overwritten by PCLOS. SO I found the uninstall and removed it. Here is where the trouble starts....when I went to install Mint in the Linux Partion it crashes. I have deleted the / partition and swap, I have tried ext3, Ext4 and ReisersFS, I have tried Mint 10, Mint 11, Ubuntu 11.04 with no luck, they all crash at some point during the install. So I just deleted the partitions altogether and booted up on a Windows XP cd to fix the master boot record. It crashes on pci.sys with XP PRO, XP Home on several different new CDROM's(not copies). BUT, I can re-install PCLOS and all is well and everything works fine. I don't want PCLOS, I want Mint.....Ideas?

Hardware, BTW, is a Dell Vostro 1500 with a 120gb Sata drive, Intel Duo Core 1.4 Ghz, 2 gb ram Windows XP Home SP2

[nunol]

Mint 10 and 11 are based on Ubuntu 10.10 and 11.04 so if one fails there is a good chance the other will also fail. If you want a Mint with GNOME try LMDE, it's not Ubuntu base but Debian based, it may help. What you can try with Mint 10 or eleven is a few boot options, try to boot and install with the "compatibility mode" or use "acpi=off" and other boot options: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootO ... %20Options

You can boot to the installer with Mint 10 and 11 with the boot option "only-ubiquity", it may help.