How Upgrade from mint 16 to 17.2 without deleting my Windows

reza_083 · Post by **reza_083** » Fri Jul 17, 2015 10:16 pm

Hello everyone,
I spent lots of time looking around but couldn't find a solid answer to my question. This might be an easy question for you but I appreciate it if you could help me step by step ( I am not familiar with technical terms) to upgrade my mint16 (mate) to 17.2 (mate or Cinnamon). Initially I installed my mint along my Vista (vista was my original OS on my laptop) and now i have a dual boot screen. I need to uninstall 16 and get the 17.2 since Petra is no longer supported and I need a long support Mint this time. I am afraid to do something wrong and loose my Vista (i cant afford it since I use that for work).

Your time and help is highly appreciated.

Post by **Pierre** » Fri Jul 17, 2015 11:25 pm

simply put:
you just delete the Mint 16 partition
- or erase it during the installation of Mint 17x.
by specify that in the partitioning options of the installer.

- the install then will update the grub loader as well.

no need to touch the windows system - at all.

ie: a Linux OS is *not* uninstalled - it's either erased or replaced. ..
& it's partition is simply recycled.

BlackVeils · Post by **BlackVeils** » Sat Jul 18, 2015 12:06 am

choose "something else" in the installer, instead of installing alongside vista or erasing hard drive etc.

you will see the partitions, you need to make sure you know which one mint is currently installed, it will be ext4 filesystem (instead of NTFS).

highlight it, click the change button underneath the partition area, choose to use it as ext4, choose to format it, make the mount point /
accept these options, then let it load.

if a weird thing pops up saying about changing size and you are given option to 'go back' - click it.

you are ready to click next.

if you are unsure, open gparted program, maximise the window, then take a screenshot of it. post to a website like http://tinypic.com/ and reply here with the web page address you will be given. or simply type:

sudo parted -l
(that's a lower case L at the end)
into a maximised terminal window, and copy-paste the results into code tags in a reply here. should be the button with a hash symbol.

Sent from my Moto G using Tapatalk

reza_083 · Post by **reza_083** » Sun Aug 30, 2015 6:02 pm

Thank you very much to both Pierre and BlackVeils. I could solve the problem following the steps suggested by BlackVeils. You might get into "Error: symbol 'grub_term_highlight_color' not found. Entering rescue mode" problem after you installed the new Linux. This can be solved by following this link: http://www.dangtrinh.com/2014/03/error- ... r-not.html.

phd21 · Post by **phd21** » Sun Aug 30, 2015 9:19 pm

Hi reza_083,

I read your post and the good replies to it. Here are my thoughts on this too...

1. *** If you can BACKUP to and external drive, like a USB hard drive or large enough USB flash drive, using a hard drive imaging program, like "Clonezilla Live" (by partitions), then do this first ***

2. You might also be able to upgrade through the Linux Mint Update Manager. Although most people would say it is better to do a fresh install when jumping major versions, like version 16-17.2, or switching to another desktop, like going from "Mate" to "Cinnamon". FYI: You can "test drive" the new Linux Mint updated editions and versions by creating a "Live" DVD or USB flash drive of them and booting to them...

FYI: It would help everyone here to have more information about your system's setup: like what edition and version of Linux Mint are you using, Cinnamon, Mate, KDE (my favorite), or Xfce; version 17 or 17.1, or What?; 32-bit or 64-bit? Some more information about your hardware would be useful as well. You can get this information from top of your system menu's Welcome screen, System Information program(s), and the best is by typing in "inxi -Fxz" from a console terminal prompt, which you can then copy and paste back here. This information helps anyone here in this forum to be able to answer any questions you may have better

, thanks. You can even add this information (abbreviated) to your signature using the control panel link in the above left of this forum screen; then when you post a question or reply to one, that info will automatically be there, ex: see mine and others below their posts.

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