Help Dual Booting Mint 17.1

I have followed all the instructions I have got from the net and made boot-able DVD's and USB sticks several different ways as people advise. I have done the same with Mint 17. I have created a partition (26G) and follow the install instructions 1: English 2:Has at least 7.4G available drive space. 4: Is connected to the internet. 5: Here it shows a page where I think it should display the drive options (but does not) If I push the "install now" button it comes up with an error "No root file system is defined --Please correct this from the partitioning menu" I close the installer and look at the drives in GParted and they are all there and the one I created for Linux is PARTITION - /dev/sda4 FILE SYSTEM - ext4
MOUNT POINT - /media/makulu/0C43086E0C43086E LABEL - Lin
SIZE - 26.02 GB USED - 590.07 Mb UNUSED - 24.44 GB FLAG - (blank)
No indication on how to fix the "No root file system" problem. I have tried so many bits of advise that I am beginning to think that I may be better of sticking to windows (perish the thought)
Can anyone help?
Col

Hi,

Before installing Linux Mint 17 to the entire HDD of my HP p2 1317cb desktop, it was running a preinstalled windows 8 OEM UEFI. After several failed attempts of dual booting(no grub menu and boots directly to the windows 8) i then decided to do a erase all and install Linux option. Now i have Linux Mint 17.1 working flawlessly, so far. What i want to now do is, dual boot a windows 7 installation alongside my Linux. Please advise on the best way to do this.
Thank You.

Note: Before doing a clean install of Linux i disabled secure boot,enabled legacy, and disabled fast boot.

I wish to do a fresh install of win 8 over the tech preview 10 which is on my dual boot system. On my partition win 10 is on the left and mint 17 is on the right. I'm afraid that even though I'll direct win 8 to install over win10 it will also wipe out my mint installation because of its position on the partition. Can someone confirm this?
thanks

Did it again!

Last week, with help from this forum, I was able to install Linux Mint 17.1 dual boot with Windows 8.1. It worked so well, I decided to explore other Linux distros recommended by forum members as some I wanted to check out.

I was using Unetbootin to download and install these as live sessions on my Windows 8.1 partition.

On my last such download, something went wrong, and no doubt I caused the error, but no clue as to how.

When I opened up this PC, I got the normal dual boot option for Windows and Mint. When I selected Windows, I found an additional dual boot option between it and Unetbootin! Somehow I created a partition (?) on my C Drive for Unetbootin (see Thumbnail below).
This Unetbootin option only goes to a page for me to choose another OS. Further, when I rebooted, the Windows/Mint dual boot option no longer existed, just the Windows/Unetbootin one.

Been checking out various articles and websites about BCD/MBR repair, but nothing definitive (that I can understand) about modifying these to delete the Unetbootin partition and restoring the Windows/linux dual boot.

Naturally, this is a newbie land mine area, so I'm very reluctant to try anything I can't fully understand, which is the category everything I've Googled on this topic falls into.

Anyone know how I can resolve this short of a complete start over
installation based on steps that basically a PC fence post can follow?

TIA
Cheers!

I've made a couple attempts at installing these OS's on my machine and am still not getting it. I've actually been using AVLinux for about the past nine months, and it's working fairly well. And, yes, I know XP is down for the count, but for the moment it's the only MS option available to me - and I *need* to get it running for some work related web stuff...

This is all on a 32 bit AMD system btw.

What I've tried: Everything on one SATA drive. Partition one formatted to NTFS (about 20GB) for XP. Partitions 2 and 3 are Root and Home for AVLinux, Partition 4 at the end of the drive as the /swap for AVL.

All the how-to's and guides I've been able to come across point to (usually) Mint or Ubuntu's install dialog, and to select "something else" - which, by the way, is not a function of AVLinux's installation procedure. During install you can install GRUB to the MBR *or* root partition..

So, just to clarify to procedure (as I might have it now, but am very unsure) XP gets installed first (which is done at this point...) then my Linux distro *to the MBR* (?) then I need to add a stanza to GRUB telling it where XP lives? XP is not showing up on GRUB as I'm doing it, but I'm not too sure if installing Linux to the MBR (on the same physical drive as XP) actually wipes out the Windows bootloader....and if so, how chainloading would actually work...

So, any help appreciated, thanks.

I recently wiped Windows 8 off my laptop and installed Linux Mint; I selected the 'wipe everything/install Linux Mint' option, and I've got Mint working....but:

My Mint partition is about 45GB; it's a 1TB drive, and I've got a partition or two that I can't seem to do anything with. I can't expand my Mint partition; I've tried putzing around with the other partition and split it into two, but I can only look at them, can't save things to them. When I use Dolphin and put in a test file with just some random text on one then reboot my computer, it's gone.

Here's the results of a df -k command:

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda6 48991048 11277504 35201880 25% /
none 4 0 4 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
udev 4014028 4 4014024 1% /dev
tmpfs 805912 1352 804560 1% /run
none 5120 0 5120 0% /run/lock
none 4029560 15044 4014516 1% /run/shm
none 102400 8 102392 1% /run/user
/dev/sda3 118782228 60984 112664388 1% /media/joshandkaren/8495904f-0de8-4cf9-b169-2c86a79ade35
/dev/sda1 776984056 70296 737422180 1% /media/joshandkaren/9db04a44-79dd-470f-8d54-508c3d852657


When I do an ls -al command on either /media folder on either partition, there's also a + sign at the very end of the listing (drwx...+) and I don't know what that means or signifies.


I'm obviously not hurting for space on my main Mint partition, but it would be nice to have the whole drive, of course. Does anyone have any notion of what I did wrong and how I might be able to 'open up' my partitions in order to get that space back/useable? I'm not averse to reinstalling/wiping everything and starting again; also, I'd goofed something up when trying to dual-boot Win8 and Mint, so I just decided to wipe everything and stick with Mint solo. I had an instance where I was only able to bring up the 'grub rescue' prompt, whereupon I'd simply reinstalled Mint from the DVD, so I wonder if that has anything to do with it.....

Any input would be appreciated, thank you!

Hello All. This is my first post here. I am worse than a newbie; I'm a PC dinosaur! Not joking either.
Recently got a Dell Inspiron 3048 with Windows 8.1 pre installed. As I am a die hard XP user (my other PC is a Dell Dimension 2400), and seeing that PC's days may be numbered, I want to start using Linux, and decided Mint 17.1 would be first on the list.
Ordered a Linux Mint 17.1 boot disk and went to install it. At the option for a dual boot with Windows, I got lost, and did not understand the "other" choice versus making Linux the only OS on the PC. I wound up wiping my HDD and lost contact with Windows 8.1. Fortunately, the Dell Tech I got at Dell Support was able to walk me through getting Windows back up, but the only way I can now access Mint 17.1 is with the boot disk, but there is no set up options as it is already set up, even though incorrectly for a dual boot.
How do I wipe out Linux without losing Windows 8.1 as well so I can re install Linux and this time make the correct selection for a dual boot?
Anyone willing to respond please do so small and slow so I can follow.
TIA.
BTW, I have tried installing Zorin OS 9 Ultimate on my XP machine via DVD and USB, but I can't get past the f1/f2 loop, even though I have reconfigured my boot sequence according to the drive I'm installing from. Zorin support has been MIA on this. Anyone having a similar problem?
Cheers

Hi Guys, I installed a dual boot config. on a 160 gb hdd. The first choice in grub menu is Linux Lite (latest distro) and the second boot choice is Mint 17.1 Rebecca. I'm encountering a situation that when I boot into LL the system boots OK. Then when I try a restart and boot into Mint it seems to be doing OK until the end of the boot process at which time the screen flashes the Mint logo and then goes dark-then flashes then goes dark every second or so-endlessly. After a while I'm sometimes able to get Mint to finish booting by hitting the esc key. Any ideas how to make this screen flashing situation stop and do a normal boot?

Update: Solved the problem by changing the resolution settings to coincide with those of LL....flashing stopped!

LL and Mint IMHO are two of the best distros for a Newbie to "get their feet wet." - I know, I am that Newbie.

I am using linux mint and the grub menu gets configured automatically using scripts in /etc/grub.d. The menuentry that gets created is something like Code:

"linux mint (on /dev/sda1)"

. I use external drives sometimes and also have linux on my harddrive which I also switch between computers. It gets confusing when it says /dev/sda2 when it means something else. It boots fine because that actual boot command uses uuid. How can I change the text of the (script generated) description to also use partition labels or uuid (or the first few chars) just so I know which install will actually boot. like this: Code:

"Linux Mint (OFFICESSD)"
"Linux Mint (HOMEHDD)"
"Ubuntu (SANDISK)"
"Ubuntu (IMATION)"

I realise (maybe its the best way) I can change the "GRUB_TITLE=Linux Mint 17 Cinnamon 64-bit" in /etc/linuxmint/info but would rather a smoother way.

Hello, I hope someone can assist. I have installed 17 on 2 laptops and 17.1 on another all with windows 8 upgraded to 8.1 Now I have a new PC with 8.1 and cannot get 17.1 to install. I go thru all the steps but when I get past "something else" and choose the "free space" that I partitioned in windows and hit install the window pops up with "no root file system is defined" "Please correct from partitioning menu.. I have never had this happen, did I not do something? There is 1 300mb(fat32, efi) partition, ntfa, free space(which is where I am trying to install Linux), 1 small and 1 large "free space". Then the define for boot loader installation, which I do not remember needing to do before. Can someone please help. The PC is an Acer Aspire, amd10, 3.7ghz, quad core, radeon hd 8670 graphics , 1 terabyte hdd, 4gb ram, windows 8.1