[UPDATE: disk has been discovered, did the literal take it apart and put it back together" which sorted out whatever the problem was. I would have edited the title but I'm not allowed to] this isn't good. I tried my first ever install of Linux. A cinnamon mint 21.1 from USB, I did a few attempts and had kernel panic. When I went to search forums and videos back in Windows 10, I had a bsod and after restarting I can only go to bios and I don't even see my disc mentioned in boot options.

The weird thing is, I didn't even have this drive in the computer when I tried the installation. I tried it like a kook onto a different disc, was the plan, though I didn't get that far. Not realizing that apparently you can't install Linux from a USB onto another disc? I think?

In any case I'm not sure why that would affect my main system disc when it wasn't even in the computer at that time. I'm running aoris gaming 5, gigabyte z370, latest Windows 10 sort of whatever the current version is I guess. Yeah I don't know what other information would be relevant considering that I can't even see the system disk at all.

Did you get the kernel panic after installing Mint and first booting?
Which disc do you not see mentioned in the BIOS, the Mint?

No, definitely not true and in fact has been the most common way to install Linux for years. You can install Linux from USB to an internal or external drive or to another flash drive if you want.

Since you have Mint, use the USB with the Mint installer and boot it and select the option to Try Mint. Once you are booted to the Desktop, set up your internet connection and go to the site below and download and run the boot repair script. I would suggest that you read the page before doing anything and select the 2nd Option discussed on the page to download boot repair. When you run it, select the Create BootInfo Summary option and do not try any repairs. When it finishes, it will give you a link and you can post that link here for members to view the output so that you can get some help. Have your Mint and windows disks attached when you run it. It will not make any changes if you select the option mentioned.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair

Let's see if I butcher these quotes too terribly, shall we? Hey Yancek! Thanks for the reply. First off, I was too busy enjoying my new linux experience (mostly enjoying, there is definitely a great deal of learning to do also. Which is also enjoyable. Until you have something you really want to be doing, but instead you have to be learning first instead of doing. Anyway) So... I'm not exactly sure what the issue was, but I think I have a good idea, I'll address your questions, and then offer my theory and overall state 'the situation' in summary. Just to be thorough, and follow through, and then this can be left as a record hopefully to help somebody else down the line.

So, I didn't want to screw up my system disk (win 10), and I have like 10 disks in this machine, so to avoid confusion I disconnected all but the 1 SSD, 500GB like, FAT32 / APFS non-bootable, non-system disk that would become my ext4 linux /root and /home disk. I would startup, select the thumb drive in boot overide menu, get to the LM splash and then die in a kernel panic, 'extended range" "failure to synch" "shutting down the cpus" wall of text. So, to backup a little bit, I had a few incidents before that that resulted in black screen with cursor (not blinking), and black screen. And then made some changes and progressed to the kernel panic. Which brings me to my first point for new people having issues:

Be sure to disconnect all of your peripherals, midi controllers, keyboards, idk, phones, docks etc...So satisfying that obvious must-do, deal-breaker, got me from black screen, to cursor, and finally to kernel panic and BSOD.

Yeah, 100% Lol. I was confused by some old forum post where a woman was trying to deal with her husbands bad windows install, and some similar sounding words were written, I misunderstood / misinterpreted... my bad. And I can say this from first hand experience now, because in the end, I was able to to install cinnamon from that thumb drive, onto the 500GB SSD, with my other 1TB win10 sys disk present, without overwriting it. I considered the possibility that the win10 UEFI needed to be present in order to blah blah blah, but no. I went back and re-read the post, from the wife, that I talked about. And realized it wasn't saying what I thought at first.


In summary, what I did that made the differences, in stages was: (1) remove a peripheral or two, then (2) remove every single unnecessary peripheral, and lastly (3) update all the drivers for motherboard/chipset, and (4) flash BIOS to the latest version. I'm pretty sure that it was #4 that got everything moving forward