No automatic partition option during dual boot Mint/Win10 install

[Butch]

I'm trying to install Mint 18.3 having already installed Win 10 (upgraded from previous install of Win7) on a new 1Tb hard drive with 6 GB RAM . Before attempting Mint install I made sure to uncheck "Fast Startup" in the Win10 power options as per an article referenced in another post on this forum -
https://sites.google.com/site/easylinux ... ct/windows (I did the reboot after saving changes, and it is indeed disabled).
I also checked msinfo32 to see if my boot had UEFI/Secure Boot (it doesn't). BIOS mode is Legacy from 2009 (it's an old but reliable machine).
However, when I attempted the Mint install, although it did see that Win10 was already installed ("This computer currently has Windows10 on it. What would you like to do?"), the only options I"m given are to "erase disk and install Mint" and "something else". The installation guide says I should be given the option to "Install Mint alongside Windows 10", which will activate an automatic partition of the hard drive - but that option isn't there. A friend sent me a screen shot where he started a dual boot install and it does have that as the first option. He doesn't have a clue why I'm not getting it during my installation, and I couldn't find an answer here. Does anybody have any ideas? I'd rather avoid manual partition if possible, given my limited computer skills. Several online articles also mention how easy this automatic option has made Linux dual boot installation, but obviously it has to be offered as an option before you can use it. Many thanks.

[WharfRat]

Hello Butch

Welcome to Linux Mint and the Linux Mint forum

Is it possible that the partition scheme is msdos and there are already four primary partitions leaving no room for an extended partition

From the live installation media open a terminal and paste back the results of udisksctl info -b /dev/sda|grep -w Type and sudo blkid

[Butch]

OK, thanks. Here's the result:

mint@mint ~ $ udisksctl info -b /dev/sda|grep -w Type
Type: dos
mint@mint ~ $ sudo blkid
/dev/sda1: LABEL="eMachines" UUID="965C85F05C85CB85" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="cb509d81-01"
/dev/sda2: UUID="F480269A802662FA" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="cb509d81-02"
/dev/sdd1: UUID="6236-6436" TYPE="vfat"
/dev/sr0: UUID="2017-11-24-13-25-42-00" LABEL="Linux Mint 18.3 Cinnamon 64-bit" TYPE="iso9660" PTUUID="7da654e6" PTTYPE="dos"
/dev/loop0: TYPE="squashfs"
mint@mint ~ $

[Butch]

Gparted shows:

/dev/sda1 ntfs Size: 931.07 GiB Used: 56.66 GiB
/dev/sda2 ntfs Size: 450 MiB Used: 363.12 MiB
unallocated Size: 2.71 MiB

[WharfRat]

Your problem is there's no room on the disk to install Mint or any Linux distro.

There's only "unallocated Size: 2.71 MiB" reported.

And I'm not sure if you shrink the windows main partition /dev/sda1 if it would impact what's on /dev/sda2

In any event if you want to try installing Mint alongside win you would have to shrink the windows partition using the shrink utility to make room.

There are plenty of sites like this that explain how to do it.

[Butch]

Thanks. I went ahead and installed mint on an HD laptop with pre-installed Win 8.1 (upgraded to Win 10) and got the partition option (although I just decided to wipe windows off that drive since it had very little data on it). I may do the same on the other machine rather than go through the hassle of partition shrinking - but I"ll check out the link to see what's involved.

[Pierre]

so, with your other machine - - use Disk Management:
https://www.drivereasy.com/knowledge/op ... indows-10/
and use that to shrink C: drive back by some 100Gb or so

then use the "something else" option in the LinuxMint installer, to create some partitions,
and click on the next Icon, to continue with the actual installation.