Change Mint 4 to Mint 7 (I've got the ISO)

[emorrp1]

Hello, and Welcome to Linux Mint, is this the effect you're after: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 25#p180894

[Anaxis]

There are several ways to do this, in reality, even involving upgrading your distribution to 7 from inside 4, but what I would recommend, is a complete partition wipe and installation back onto that partition, because it makes things just...less messy, should something go wrong.

It's never advisable to install one operating system over another, except for in the case of MS Win Vista/7 upgrades, but that's not really installation over another OS, that's doing essentially what

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get update

and

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

would do, installing/upgrading one OS from inside the previous OS.

However, this could get messy, especially if not everything upgrades correctly, you end up with outdated drivers, etc.

So here's what I recommend (and believe me, take EVERYTHING I say with a pinch of salt, I'm relatively new to Linux, and haven't done a lot of my homework): use that ISO and make a LiveCD out of it (as simple as burning it to disc), and boot into that Mint 7 iso using the one-time boot menu.

From there, you'd open a programme called gparted, that's GNOME Partition Editor, and find where you've previously installed Mint 4, which would more than likely be labelled as an ext3 partition. Take care not to mess with any NTFS partitions, because those are Windows XP's residence and deleting or resizing them, even looking at them the wrong way, might cause Windows to have a panic attack and die.

Once you find that ext3 partition, just delete it outright, and exit gparted. Go into the LiveCD's installation menu, and when you get to the partitioning stage, choose to install on the largest available free space. Then you're done!

[emorrp1]

Yep, that solution would work too. Note that my solution in the other post isn't strictly speaking "installing over" either, but it matched what the OP wanted to do, it's effectively similar to your method but being able to do it entirely from the installer.

[Anaxis]

True, and it would actually be a bit faster/more convenient.

Maybe it's just me, but I like to start over with a clean partition, kinda like erasing an old picture entirely, or getting a new piece of paper before drawing a new one, as opposed to erasing at the same time you create a new picture, erasing with one hand and drawing with the other.

Albeit, I might be kinda OCD, so maybe that analogy makes no sense whatsoever. xD

[emorrp1]

Oh yeah, so I did (sorry, didn't connect the two posts). Unfortunately it seems you have a problem. From what you have described, either this is a brand new hard-drive or the file-system table is corrupt, which doesn't bode well for your data (I hope you took a backup ). Most important question: can you boot into either Windows or Daryna? Do you even get as far as a grub menu? I suspect not, in which case I'll ask Fred for advice, as he's the expert around here with partitioning.

[emorrp1]

Ok, well the fact that you can boot into the systems is a good sign, so all is not lost. I'm assuming the whole hard drive is 80GB is size, correct me if I'm wrong. I still don't quite understand what's going on, so please provide the following info:

0) boot into (Gloria) liveCD
1) post the output of the following command (note the lack of number on the end, other than that change as necessary):

Code: Select all

sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda

2) take a screenshot of Partition Editor (and attach it here)
3) repeat both of the above (if possible) using the installed Daryna

[emorrp1]

Hi, that is useful, thanks. Indeed the command should show the same output since it's a listing of the drive setup. FYI sda without the number refers to the drive, sdaX refers to the actual partitions. You could manage the table by using code tags in the post, which preserve spaces. Anyway, I don't know what's going on, but I've asked for help from Fred, who's the forum's resident partitioning expert.

[Fred]

Yakfly,

Greetings sir, and welcome to the Linux Mint forum.

Looks as if you are having a problem. As I understand it you have a working XP partition, a XP recovery partition, and a working Mint 4 partition. You wish to replace the Mint 4 partition with Mint 7. If this is incorrect please correct me.

From a quick scan of your posts it appears that you may have a bad burn on the Mint 7 disk. Unfortunately this is very common problem. My first suggestion would be to re download and burn the Mint 7 iso. Or at least re burn it. Burn speed should be 8X or less. I burn my ISOs at 4 X. Burn mode should be RAW. This is usually given as DAO or SAO. DAO is preferable.

Boot the new live cd iso. In the menu you will find a program called "gparted." It is a partitioning program. Please post a screen shot of each of your hard drives.

You said you didn't know how to do this. Look in the menu and you will find a screen shot program. It will generate a file that you can then post to this forum as an attachment.

Let's start anew and take a fresh look at this problem.

Fred

[emorrp1]

Yakfly: you're welcome, glad you got it sorted the way you like (even if it wasn't an ideal method). I no longer trust Firefox to save my data, so whenever I make a long/important post, I always write it externally, then copy and paste to firefox.