I'm going to try and be as descriptive as possible here, but I am a noob and for now still a little scriptkiddie. This is my first time downloading Linux Mint, but I have downloaded Linux Ubuntu before years ago.

Bought a new laptop with Windows 8 and i couldn't stand it. I've been wanting to try Mint, so I formatted my USB drive and downloaded Mint, booted from the USB. When I got to the main screen after booting the first time, it asked me to sign in, but since I hadn't set a login, it logged me in automatically in about 8 seconds or so.

Only three things were on the desktop: "Computer", "Home", and "Install Linux Mint". Since I have full intentions of writing it to my hard drive and getting rid of Windows 8, I went through the installation process and wiped the hard drive, then clicked on the option to reboot. Suddenly a terminal popped up saying something like: "Installation failed", and then Linux just crashed. I rebooted manually and when I brought it up again, it is just a black screen with the three desktop options aforementioned (no menu and no menu bar and no way to get to it).

I tried rebooting again without the USB drive in, and my computer said "No boot available". So Linux succesfully wiped my hard drive of Windows but didn't install Linux.

Plugged the USB back in, booted Linux, still black screen error, and tried running the "Install Linux Mint" once more.

It gives me a box that says: "Authentication is required to install your machine", and it tells me to type in a password. A password I have not set nor do I have.

Searched around for similar issues and only found people who wanted to change their lost Authentication Root Password, and tried all the steps "sudo passwd root", which in the terminal gave me:
"sudo: unable to resolve host mint
Enter new UNIX password:" I'd enter something, which wouldn't show up, and then when it asked for it again, enter it again and it'd give me: "passwd: Authentication token manipulation error
Passed: password unchanged"

My computer is now entirely unusable. I honestly have no idea what to do.

I apologize if this wasn't enough information. I don't know enough about this yet, just trying to learn.

I haven't touched Mint in ages, so I can't really offer any advice on that distro. But, and this might be a long shot, can it have something to do with secure boot?

Try to disable secure boot from the BIOS settings: https://technet.microsoft.com/sv-se/.../dn481258.aspx

And then try again.

Best regards,
HMW

Edit: A little more info on your hardware would also be helpful. As in: what brand is your laptop. What is the laptop's name.

Edit II: Found this: http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/1556 Read it, it will be helpful.

If you had windows 8, it was probably installed using UEFI/GPT. Did you see and select that option when installing Mint? If you can boot the Mint flash drive, open a terminal and enter this command and post the output: sudo parted -l(Lower Case Letter L in the command).

To get more detailed information so that someone can help, you could try downloading the bootinfoscript from the link below and running it then posting the output here. There is a link in the Description box with instructions.