Mint Installation from USB

[alexaiv]

Hello guys and gals,

so I decided to switch from Ubuntu to Mint. I uninstalled Ubuntu through Windows and created a bootable usb flash drive with Mint 14 on it. I tried to install mint and it simply froze every time. After some time it would unfreeze and I could go a step further with the installation but again it froze until a window popped which say that the installed crashed. So I decided to install Ubuntu again using the same usb flash drive I used earlier to install mint.
The problem is this: once in Ubuntu, I thought I would try to install Mint from the same image I used to create the usb in Windows on a virtualbox just to make sure it was not the image's fault or something. And it worked perfectly.
Any ideas what the problem could be? I thought that maybe my flash drive was at fault but it worked perfectly fine when installing Ubuntu.
I would really like to give Mint a chance it looks awesome.

Cheers,
Alex

PS: My dvd rom does not work on my laptop so the only option for me to install linux is through a usb drive.

[catweazel]

Regarding what the problem might be, some machines simply refuse to boot properly from USB. One of my kids wanted their Windwoes 7 moved to an SSD so I was going to fire up parted magic. Would it boot on that machine? Would it Nelly! In the end I had to create a DVD to get around it. There was nothing wrong with the USB pen drive, btw. It booted perfectly on several other machines.

What I am about to suggest might give you heartburn, or worse. Nevertheless, I'll proceed...

Boot from the Mint iso while it's on your hard disk.

Create a directory in the root of your Ubuntu installation, call it "mintiso"

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sudo mkdir /mintiso

Next, move or copy the Mint iso into that directory. Here I assume you have downloaded 64bit Mint 14 cinnamon into your Downloads folder via Ubuntu...

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sudo cp ~/Downloads/linuxmint-14.1-cinnamon-dvd-64bit.iso /mintiso
sudo fdisk -l

Use the output of fdisk -l to determine where your Ubuntu is. I'll assume sda1...

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sudo gedit /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Ignore the line at the start of that file that says "WARNING! DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE!"

Add this code to the end of the file:

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        menuentry "Mint 14 LiveCD" { 
        set root=(hd0,1)
        loopback loop /mintiso/linuxmint-14.1-cinnamon-dvd-64bit.iso
        linux (loop)/casper/vmlinuz boot=casper iso-scan/filename=/mintiso/linuxmint-14.1-cinnamon-dvd-64bit.iso noprompt noeject 
        initrd (loop)/casper/initrd.lz 
    }

Beware the line that reads "set root=(hd0,1)"

hd0 is sda, and 1 is the first partition, so (hd0,1) means sda1. You may have sdb2 or something else entirely. You will have to adjust this line with the information you get from the fdisk -l command above.

Save the changes and reboot. Now you can try to install Mint from the iso stored on disk You will of course have to make room for Mint and not destroy Ubuntu. Once you've got Mint installed then you can work out how to kill off Ubuntu.

If you don't like this idea, don't be so cheap; buy a replacement DVD