Installation Help - Mint 14 (Nadia) 64 Bit - Matte

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jjppott2

Installation Help - Mint 14 (Nadia) 64 Bit - Matte

Post by jjppott2 »

Hi,

I am completely new to Linux and have been having issues trying to install Mint 14 (Nadia) 64 Bit - Matte. I am using a Lenovo Z570 with 8 gigs ram and a 750 gig hardrive. I have tried to install Mint a few times and as such likely done more harm than good at this point.

So far my install attempts have gone something like this. Booted the live version off of a bootable USB and installed Mint alongside my existing installation of Windows 7. I used the Mint program to create a new partition to put Mint on (one thing to note here is it would be nice if the wizard/program let the user know which was the existing partition and which was the new one being created - it may show this but I might have missed it?). I restarted my computer and windows booted up normally without showing a bootloader screen. It did however want to run a check disk (and it seems to after every time I tried installing and creating a partition from the live version) So i did some research and ended up installing EasyBCD and put in a new Grub2 boot record. I then restarted my computer and now had the apparent option of loading Mint. I tried and ended up getting Grub4Dos screen with minimal BASH like line editing available. At this point I rebooted into windows removed the partitions created by the Mint install and then tried again. I rebooted and then I deleted the old Linux boot record created a new one and ran into the same issue as before. I then rebooted into windows and created the partitions manually and tried doing the advanced install and eneded up with the same issue as before (though this time windows did not want to run a chedk disk).

At this point I did some research and came up with this post: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... os#p656807. So I tried to mimic what was going on there and booted a live copy and figured out how to run bootinfoscript as found here:http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=64044 (which needs to be slightly updated as the syntax is no longer up to date). After running bootinfoscript I mirrored what was going on in the previously listed post and force loaded Grub2 onto Sda3 rebooted and tried again. This time when trying to boot into Linux it broot me into a different Grub screen but Mint would still not boot. So I removed the various partitions I had manually created through Windows and tried the standard install again. It still would not boot into Mint and so I tried force loading Grub2 again and recieved an error about the partition not being valid. As I mentioned before I think I have probably done more harm than good... One thing to note is that after each install I did remove the boot record with EasyBCD and created a new one.

This is the relevant info from bootinfoscript:

Code: Select all

                  Boot Info Script 0.61      [1 April 2012]


============================= Boot Info Summary: ===============================

 => Windows is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda.
 => Windows is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdb.

sda1: __________________________________________________________________________

    File system:       ntfs
    Boot sector type:  Windows Vista/7: NTFS
    Boot sector info:  No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block.
    Operating System:  
    Boot files:        /bootmgr /Boot/BCD

sda2: __________________________________________________________________________

    File system:       ntfs
    Boot sector type:  Windows Vista/7: NTFS
    Boot sector info:  No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block.
    Operating System:  Windows 7
    Boot files:        /bootmgr /Boot/BCD /Windows/System32/winload.exe

sda3: __________________________________________________________________________

    File system:       ntfs
    Boot sector type:  Grub2 (v1.99)
    Boot sector info:  Grub2 (v1.99) is installed in the boot sector of sda3 
                       and looks at sector 1459946816 of the same hard drive 
                       for core.img. core.img is at this location and looks 
                       in partition 72 for . According to the info in the 
                       boot sector, sda3 has 31459327 sectors, but according 
                       to the info from fdisk, it has 31612655 sectors.
    Operating System:  
    Boot files:        /bootmgr /boot/bcd

sda4: __________________________________________________________________________

    File system:       Extended Partition
    Boot sector type:  -
    Boot sector info: 

sda5: __________________________________________________________________________

    File system:       ext4
    Boot sector type:  Grub2 (v1.99)
    Boot sector info:  Grub2 (v1.99) is installed in the boot sector of sda5 
                       and looks at sector 1345044488 of the same hard drive 
                       for core.img. core.img is at this location and looks 
                       in partition 72 for .
    Operating System:  Linux Mint 14 Nadia
    Boot files:        /boot/grub/grub.cfg /etc/fstab

sda6: __________________________________________________________________________

    File system:       swap
    Boot sector type:  -
    Boot sector info: 

sdb1: __________________________________________________________________________

    File system:       vfat
    Boot sector type:  Windows 7: FAT32
    Boot sector info:  No errors found in the Boot Parameter Block.
    Operating System:  
    Boot files:        /boot/grub/grub.cfg /efi/BOOT/grubx64.efi

============================ Drive/Partition Info: =============================

Drive: sda _____________________________________________________________________

Disk /dev/sda: 750.2 GB, 750156374016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 91201 cylinders, total 1465149168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes

Partition  Boot  Start Sector    End Sector  # of Sectors  Id System

/dev/sda1    *          2,048       206,847       204,800   7 NTFS / exFAT / HPFS
/dev/sda2             206,848 1,289,998,115 1,289,791,268   7 NTFS / exFAT / HPFS
/dev/sda3       1,433,536,512 1,465,149,167    31,612,656  12 Compaq diagnostics
/dev/sda4       1,289,998,334 1,433,536,511   143,538,178   5 Extended
/dev/sda5       1,289,998,336 1,416,935,423   126,937,088  83 Linux
/dev/sda6       1,416,937,472 1,433,536,511    16,599,040  82 Linux swap / Solaris


Drive: sdb _____________________________________________________________________

Disk /dev/sdb: 15.5 GB, 15512174592 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1885 cylinders, total 30297216 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

Partition  Boot  Start Sector    End Sector  # of Sectors  Id System

/dev/sdb1    *          2,048    30,296,063    30,294,016   c W95 FAT32 (LBA)


"blkid" output: ________________________________________________________________

Device           UUID                                   TYPE       LABEL

/dev/loop0                                              squashfs   
/dev/sda1        106C70916C707378                       ntfs       
/dev/sda2        267A6FD07A6F9AF7                       ntfs       
/dev/sda3        D4CC07C6CC07A1BA                       ntfs       LENOVO_PART
/dev/sda5        00c18a1f-bc43-458a-adf3-342fd1171dcc   ext4       
/dev/sda6        3e1daeed-ab2b-434f-953f-99f89db48092   swap       
/dev/sdb1        927D-B3D7                              vfat       LINUX MINT

================================ Mount points: =================================

Device           Mount_Point              Type       Options

/dev/loop0       /rofs                    squashfs   (ro,noatime)
/dev/sdb1        /cdrom                   vfat       (ro,noatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro)


Any help would be greatly appreciated. Also, if anyone can tell me how to get wireless to work in the live version that would also be appreciated. It always says that my wireless is disabled by a hardware switch. I have flipped what i believe to be the wireless on off switch a few times and it only just turns off and on bluetooth in Mint, but it turns off and both in Windows. I also tried an external wireless card and it also said it was disabled by a hardware switch.
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caf4926
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Re: Installation Help - Mint 14 (Nadia) 64 Bit - Matte

Post by caf4926 »

Linux Mint 21.1 Cinnamon
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raymerjacque
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Re: Installation Help - Mint 14 (Nadia) 64 Bit - Matte

Post by raymerjacque »

You do know that you can install the 32bit version as well even with 8GB Ram ? it is PAE enabled ( meaning it detects ram above 4GB ). Not sure if you prefer 64bit, if you do then that is cool, im just pointing it out since new guys obviously dont know. Personaly i have had alot of issues with 64bit and 32bit runs just so much smoother for me.
jjppott2

Re: Installation Help - Mint 14 (Nadia) 64 Bit - Matte

Post by jjppott2 »

Thanks for your response. I had tried that before, though I did just finish trying it again. I created 3 partitions (one as a swap as recommended by the documentation) one for home and one for root (as indicated per your link). When I rebooted I did not have anything in the bootloader so I added one through EasyBCD. When i tried loading the new entry through the bootloader it got me to a Grub screen (not the Grub4Dos I had before), though it is still a limited BASH like line editing available. If I try the command "boot" it says the kernel needs to be loaded first.

Thanks
jjppott2

Re: Installation Help - Mint 14 (Nadia) 64 Bit - Matte

Post by jjppott2 »

raymerjacque wrote:You do know that you can install the 32bit version as well even with 8GB Ram ? it is PAE enabled ( meaning it detects ram above 4GB ). Not sure if you prefer 64bit, if you do then that is cool, im just pointing it out since new guys obviously dont know. Personaly i have had alot of issues with 64bit and 32bit runs just so much smoother for me.
Thanks for your response. I am downloading the 32 bit version now. I had not tried it previously (though I figured it would probably work), I just thought I might take advantage of the 64 bit since it should work on my computer. I will let you know if the 32 bit version makes a difference.
jjppott2

Re: Installation Help - Mint 14 (Nadia) 64 Bit - Matte

Post by jjppott2 »

jjppott2 wrote:
raymerjacque wrote:You do know that you can install the 32bit version as well even with 8GB Ram ? it is PAE enabled ( meaning it detects ram above 4GB ). Not sure if you prefer 64bit, if you do then that is cool, im just pointing it out since new guys obviously dont know. Personaly i have had alot of issues with 64bit and 32bit runs just so much smoother for me.
Thanks for your response. I am downloading the 32 bit version now. I had not tried it previously (though I figured it would probably work), I just thought I might take advantage of the 64 bit since it should work on my computer. I will let you know if the 32 bit version makes a difference.
As a follow up to this. I downloaded Mint 14 Nadia 32 bit and tried to boot from a USB with it. It failed, I checked the MD5 sums and they were right, I tried a few times, re-downloaded it and it still would not boot the live version. I put the 64 bit version back on the USB and it booted the live version just fine. I also tried this with the 32 bit version of Mint 13 and had the same Issue (could not boot from the live version). I tried the 64 bit of 13 and it booted fine (I have no idea why I cant boot from the 32 bit versions). The 64 bit version seems like it loads fine, it does not put anything on the boot record and if I add it from EasyBCD I run into the same issue as before - I get to the Grub limited BASH like editor but I have no idea if/how to boot from there (I dont think I can?). I think I give up...
caf4926
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Re: Installation Help - Mint 14 (Nadia) 64 Bit - Matte

Post by caf4926 »

Use _64 bit

Boot up the live session and start gparted and take a screen of what you see (PrtSc)
Also, open a terminal and post the result of

Code: Select all

sudo fdisk -l
My guess is you were not making sure grub was set to sda as shown here
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/10573557/Mint_ ... loader.png
Linux Mint 21.1 Cinnamon
jjppott2

Re: Installation Help - Mint 14 (Nadia) 64 Bit - Matte

Post by jjppott2 »

caf4926 wrote:Use _64 bit

Boot up the live session and start gparted and take a screen of what you see (PrtSc)
Also, open a terminal and post the result of

Code: Select all

sudo fdisk -l
My guess is you were not making sure grub was set to sda as shown here
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/10573557/Mint_ ... loader.png
Attached is the screen shot from gparted, one from fdisk, and one from what I have been using for install as well. Thanks for your help.
caf4926
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Re: Installation Help - Mint 14 (Nadia) 64 Bit - Matte

Post by caf4926 »

The way that is set in the installer looks correct
Are you saying if you proceed with that it fails?
Linux Mint 21.1 Cinnamon
jjppott2

Re: Installation Help - Mint 14 (Nadia) 64 Bit - Matte

Post by jjppott2 »

caf4926 wrote:The way that is set in the installer looks correct
Are you saying if you proceed with that it fails?
The installation seems to work fine (it completes with no errors). When I reset my computer after the install is completed, it has not added anything to the boot menu, so I have been manually adding a record through EasyBCD. When I re-boot and use the record added through EasyBCD it looks like it is going to work (starting Cmain() ) briefly comes up and then I get to a Grub command prompt that basically says:

Gnu Grub Version 2.00-7Ubuntu11
Minimal Bash-like Line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB lists possible command competitions (I didnt write down the rest)
Grub>

I looked through some of the commands from here and there is a boot command, but when run it says a kerenel must be loaded first.
caf4926
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Re: Installation Help - Mint 14 (Nadia) 64 Bit - Matte

Post by caf4926 »

EasyBCD is the problem if you ask me
It needs removing
Linux Mint 21.1 Cinnamon
jjppott2

Re: Installation Help - Mint 14 (Nadia) 64 Bit - Matte

Post by jjppott2 »

caf4926 wrote:EasyBCD is the problem if you ask me
It needs removing
If I remove EasyBCD how do I go about getting an entry into the boot record?
caf4926
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Re: Installation Help - Mint 14 (Nadia) 64 Bit - Matte

Post by caf4926 »

EasyBCD is a windows side boot manager
Grub is a Linux boot manager but it handles all OS much better IMO
I never used EasyBCD but I come across loads of folks that get messed up with it
Linux Mint 21.1 Cinnamon
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