Installation problem - Mint12

[LordElpus]

Hi there,
I am very new to Linux although I have tried a few Live CD's.

This time I wanted to set up a dual boot system with Mint 12 and followed the instructions in the magazine.

Unfortunately, when running the installer from the desktop, I only get two installation options - neither of which is to install Mint alongside Windows 7! The 'something else' option would be okay if I knew what I was doing.

I do have a Partition Manager but I am not sure how to proceed. Any help you could give would be appreciated, preferably in simple steps.

My machine is an Acer Aspire 5750 Laptop with an Intel Core i3-2310M processor, 4Gb DDR3 Ram and a 320GB HDD, running Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit.

Thanks in advance

Gary

[ajgreeny]

Perhaps the disk in your laptop already has the maximum of 4 partitions on it.

From the live Mint DVD (LXF 154?) open a terminal and run the command

Code: Select all

sudo fdisk -l

which should show the internal computer disk and partitions on it.

We'll go from there, as it is impossible to give you a safe answer without more information.


(edited because fdsik is not a command )

[LordElpus]

Perhaps the disk in your laptop already has the maximum of 4 partitions on it.

From the live Mint DVD (LXF 154?) open a terminal and run the command

Code: Select all

sudo fdisk -l

which should show the internal computer disk and partitions on it.

We'll go from there, as it is impossible to give you a safe answer without more information.


(edited because fdsik is not a command )

Thanks for that. I have run the command with the following output:

Disk /dev/sda: 320.1GB 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 6251424475 sectors
units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (maximum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk Identifier 0xde8d3a0f

Device Boot start end blocks id system
/dev/sda1 2048 31459327 15728640 27 hidden NTFS WinRE
/dev/sda2 31459328 31664127 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 31664128 625139711 296737792 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

Hope this is okay.

Gary

[towy71]

Well you have room to make an extended partition which you can create logical partitions for a Linux install.
As you have a lot of space on /sda3 you should boot in to windows and use the window facility to shrink that partition (I'm not a windows user )

Once that is done you can install Mint. nelz has already printed nice instructions with screenshots in LXF154

[LordElpus]

Excellent, that is good news. I will seek out the relevant information and get started.

Many thanks

Gary