Installation Crashed

[ATWitches]

Hello .

I'll start out by saying I am far from an expert with computers but really appreciate Linux .

I have been happily using Linux Mint 19.2 xfce for the last few years on an older PC . The PC is a HP Pavilion 400 Series with a Intel Quad Core J2900.

Since this version of Mint is no longer being supported , I decided to upgrade to Mint 20.3 xfce . I have the newer version already installed on a thumb drive which I used in the past to successfully install Linux on a different PC .

I changed boot order and the newer version of Linux loaded just fine . My installation should have been a uncomplicated one . I was connected to the internet , installed the codecs etc . I proceeded through the first five pages of the installation process until I got to the page that reads "erase disk and install Linux Mint" . When I checked this selection and clicked on proceed , I received a message that read "Installation Crashed " , "Remove Thumb Drive and Press Enter to Continue " . When I did this my screen went black with a blinking dash in the upper left hand corner .

Since then I have been unable to start the PC in either Mint 19.2 on the hard drive or 20.3 with the thumb drive . All I see when trying to start the PC is that black screen with the blinking dash in the upper left hand corner . I'm sure I didn't change anything else in the boot menu but the boot order to boot from the thumb drive . I was able to change it back to boot from the hard drive with no success . Like I said above , I used the thumb drive with 20.3 to install Linux on a different PC with no issues .

At this point I'd be grateful to just get the PC back up and running again on 19.2 for the time being even though it isn't supported anymore .

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciate . Thank You .

[mikeflan]

Hello and welcome to the forum.

HP Pavilion 400 Series

Ah - a desktop. That is good news.

Since then I have been unable to start the PC in either Mint 19.2 on the hard drive or 20.3 with the thumb drive

Um, if you can't boot the live boot you are in a pickle for sure. Disconnect the OS drive and all other drives (but not the DVD) and try to live boot. Any computer that cannot live boot is garbage as far as I'm concerned.

If you can live boot, then reconnect the drive, live boot, and then I would format the partition you plan to install LM on, create a GPT only, and then do the install. I just did this a couple days ago when I was having problems.

You should play around with LM 20.3 in the live boot for a while to make sure everything is working well before you install.

[hal8000]

There is only one thing I'm going to add here.
I recently upgraded from Mint 19.3 to Mint 21.1 Vera using a USB thumb drive.

All I saw was a black screen with blinking underscore.
My Bios is not EFI and looking at your Pavilion 400 I am sure your BIOS is also non EFI.

A lot of the modern Linux now use GPT partition tables and want to create an EFI partition, applying
to Mint 21, Ubuntu 22, EndeavourOS and Fedora 37.
One exception is MX Linux (which also avoids systemd and still uses init scripts)

Now in my case, just leave it at the flashing underscore (go make a coffee). After about 5 minutes,
the system will continue to boot (there may be some timeout in trying to create a GPT, but you can't see
any boot messages and alternate consoles ctrl-alt-F2 etc do not work).

After the install has finished you will see a message similar to "EFI boot partition not created, system may not load".
As long as grub is installed into the MBR your system should still be able to boot.

See also this post:
viewtopic.php?t=396552


And this link:
https://foxclone.org/guides.html

[ATWitches]

Thank You mikeflan and hal8000 for your welcome and suggestions . I'm going to take your suggestions and will get back in a day or so to let you know if I had any success . The most annoying thing is the old computer was operating flawlessly until I decided to upgrade to 20.3 . Its too bad the older versions of Linux don't continue to get updates . I have another nearly 20 year old PC still running fine , if a little slow , on 18.2 xfce .

[motoryzen]

I recently upgraded from Mint 19.3 to Mint 21.1 Vera using a USB thumb drive

Sorry hal8000 but " upgrading" from any of the 19.x series straight to 21.x series is impossible. the " upgrades" via either gui in the Update Manager or via terminal command only work from the most recent previous series..for example...

18.3 to 19, 19.3 to 20, 20.3 to 21

What you did was a clean install using that Mint 21.1 Vera thumb drive