Linux Mint Forums

Try starting the liveCD in compatibility mode. When the countdown appears, press any key, then select compatibility.

Hmm... Can you walk me through what you are doing more precisely. Specifically, what you are doing when you say:

2. chose demo and full
3. chose help me boot from cd

rebooted
chose mint_main_blahblah

Specifically, are you performing these steps from Vista's desktop?

Ok. Can you try something? Put the cd into your computer on your Vista desktop. When the window you have been working with comes up, just close it. Then restart your computer. Boot the cd (you may need to hit a certain key or change bios settings to boot to a cd). A live environment should load automatically (preceeded by the countdown to which I was referring). It's possible, however, that it will just give the same error it did the last time. If so, just restart again and select compatibility mode. If one of those works, you should just be able to follow the instructions in the user guide:
http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/linuxmint.com/ ... nglish.pdf

Notes:
1) You may want to defragment windows before you do any kind of repartitioning for dual booting. The results should be far better.
2) Moving/Resizing partitions can take a LOOONG time. You may have to leave it running for several hours or overnight depending on your computer's specs.
3) If you know what Mint4Win is and were intending on using it, don't install this way and tell me.

Hmm.. do you ever see something that looks like this?:

If you press "any key" on the screen clhodapp has posted you will get an options menu.

I think I know what your problems are and what the solutions are:
1) you installed mint from the vista desktop. this creates a mint4win install. uninstall it from vista's programs and features menu.
2) your computer isn't configured for booting from cd. change your bios settings.

try all your F-keys and delete.

You have to change it in your bios settings. There should be something about setting the boot order. Make sure that your disc drive appears before your hard drives.