starting from win7

[elmarts]

Mint newbie here -

win7disks1.jpg

As you can see my disk 0 has a clear space of 123 GB in the middle where I shrunk the win7 boot partition to make room for the mint installation, as seen from win7's computer management console. There is also 117 GB space on "disk 1" but I want that to remain unused if possible (panning to stick win10 there in the future). My question is how do I go about sticking all of Mint (root, user, etc, etc. and swap) into this space and ending up with a dual boot system of Mint and win 7? I have the ISO burned to DVD, and it runs live OK (although the dual screens I have seem only to echo each other rather than combine into one big screen). The installation prompts are "scary" (yes, you may laugh). I don't really understand what the options are actually doing as they don't show "before" and "after" disk layout images giving where everything is located. I've read the documentation that comes with the download, and it doesn't seem to clearly address this (I think). Guidance? - Elmar.

[xenopeek]

If you don't want to take any risks, disconnect the 2nd and 3rd disks so you can't accidentally install on those. In any case, the installer should show you the option "install alongside Windows" (or worded something like that) and would by default use the unallocated disk space and create its own partitions in that. It will automatically set up dual boot. The slider to allocate disk space shows existing partitions on the left and how much space would be given to Linux Mint on the right. If you move the slider to the left (to give Linux Mint more disk space) it would resize the existing partitions — you neither want nor need that.

As always, before you do anything scary with your computer ensure you have a recent backup of your important personal files. Hard disks do fail suddenly and data may not be recoverable, so you need that anyway.

[ZakGordon]

These guides helped me when i decided to dual-boot my system (keeping windows 'just in case'):

https://itsfoss.com/guide-install-linux ... t-windows/

https://sites.google.com/site/easylinux ... nt-install

That second site is also just a great one-stop shop for lots of great Linux advice. I think my main advice for any new Mint (linux) user is to just take your time, no read to rush, read up in detail on what you are trying to do and if in doubt ask for advice, as you did here Good luck and i hope those links give you something handy in relation to your question.

[elmarts]

Well, unhooking the other drives resulted in windows having a cow, and requiring some "repair" until it would consent to simply boot from the main drive alone That done, I installed mint OK, and all went well, including making a username of ets and a password of dad, until I tried to log into mint from grub. It shows my username, but refuses my password (any and all cases), and I see no options to fix this. How can I browbeat this installation into actually allowing me to log on? At the moment, I am in windows (obviously), several hours used, and only a bit closer to running mint ...

[xenopeek]

That's a tough one, if you already got yourself locked out. During installation of Linux Mint you were asked to create one user. The password you gave at that time was set as that user's password but it was at that time also set as the password for the root user. The passwords are otherwise not linked; so changing the one password won't change the other.

From the GRUB boot menu you can select recovery mode. In recovery mode you can select to drop to a root console. Here you will need root's password. But if you already got yourself locked out of your own account because the password is different from what you remember, I'd guess it's the same for root's password. But give it a try. If you do manage to get in there are two commands to use.

First, recovery mode by default mounts your disk as read-only but to change a user's password you need to be able to write. So remount for writing and type this command:
mount -o remount,rw /

After that is done you can set the password of a user with the command:
passwd [i]username[/i]

Mind that if you have selected to encrypt your home directory this won't be possible. Instead if you do manage to get to the root console with above steps as an alternative you can create a new user account with the command:
adduser [i]newusername[/i]
Then make this user a member of the same groups as the user created during installation of Linux Mint (so they are a full administrator):
usermod -aG adm,cdrom,dip,lpadmin,plugdev,sambashare,sudo [i]newusername[/i]
Then ensure changes have been saved to disk and reboot:
sync
reboot

[elmarts]

So, if this fails, the only choice is to take the DVD and redo the installation, I take it? *sigh* - OK, thanks.

[elmarts]

Found the problem with the password - CAPS LOCK <snort> AOK now, a functioning installation, with internet connection. Will start a new thread if I can't find out why it won't see my dual monitors, or how to change the default OS in grub. thanks all.

[MajorMuff]

Found the problem with the password - CAPS LOCK <snort> AOK now, a functioning installation, with internet connection. Will start a new thread if I can't find out why it won't see my dual monitors, or how to change the default OS in grub. thanks all.

Changing boot order in Grub:

[ http://askubuntu.com/questions/166730/c ... ty-in-grub ]

Check out the answer by LiveWireBT

[jimallyn]

I have always changed boot order with Grub Customizer:

https://launchpad.net/~danielrichter200 ... customizer

You can do it by editing config files, too, but for me it's just easier to use Grub Customizer.

[hawkeye315]

I second Grub Customizer. It has a nice GUI to do everything in for new users. While the different text/highlight colors don't work, you can insert your own background image to make the boot loader look all pretty.