Hi
You will soon realize that I know very little about computers but if you can help I will be very grateful.
I have run a PC using xp pro for the last 5years but a few months ago I decided to try Linux.
Having read many articles concerning what version is the best choice of Linux to use I settled on the Mint version 4 and purchased a CD from eBay.
I ran the system from the CD for a while and then took the plunge and transferred it to my hard disc.
I used the option on the disc for it to partition my disc and retain xp initially this worked well and I could choose between xp and mint as my OS.
When I went to start my PC one day I found it refused to boot and it displayed the message c not found.
I have a disc with uxpb on and ran this and it loaded a restricted version of xp but would not access drive c. Likewise I ran the mint CD and was able to access the internet.
I concluded that my hard drive was damaged in some way and as a PC and access to the internet is reasonably important to me I purchased another Tower with a 3 Ghz P4 processor and xp preloaded.
I have recently purchased a CD from On Disc.com with mint 5 and seek your advise on installation as I'm worried that the same thing might happen with my new hard disc as happened with my old PC.
Any light you could shed on the hard disc failure would also be appreciated
Thanks in advance
Frank

I've not used Linux Mint but I assume the CD is a Live CD which you load, get a Desktop with an Install icon. I would suggest loading the CD, running the fdisk -l command so you can see partition information and know where you can install Mint. Some OEM's have a recovery partition (usually the first) and windows on the second. If windows is pre-installed it is likely using the whole disk as one partition so you will need to re-size and create partitions. Parted Magic is a disk partitioner that is much easier to use than fdisk or cfdisk and is also a free download. You will also need to decide before installing Mint if you want to use Grub bootloader or windows bootloader.

The error message you got with the old drive, c not found, I assume is the C partition with windows? You were also unable to boot Mint?

Why did you buy the CDs? Do you not have access to a CD burner that you can use to burn images? Also why didn't you just get a new disk, rather than a whole machine? I'm simply curious.

It is, however, quite unlikely (I'd really prefer to say impossible, but you never know, I guess) that Mint would have caused the death of your disk.

You purchased a whole new computer because you thought you had a bad hard drive? I hope that was a fairly old PC, because a hard drive would cost about $100, and can be installed in minutes. I however, will second that its highly unlikely Mint smoked your drive. Its quite possible you just had a software isssue, as opposed to a hardware issue.

IGF

Linux Mint is one of the best distros out there for ease and user tolerance. Hope you have good hardware, and also good ram, because it will make a difference in performance etc.

I think that Mint is the cadillac of Ubuntu.

My MINT system is running fine and I plan on keeping that way. I do not have any bugs with this system. When I do find a problem, the time it takes me to find a solution, it usually corrects it self. Wish I could find a way to change the menu text though.

I recently upgraded the motherboard from a Asus A7V133, AMD 2000+ (1.67 GHz) to a Gigabyte M61PME-S2 and AMD Athlon 64 Single core processor, (3.2GHz), (1 GB Ram - DDR2). WOW, what a difference.

The old board kept locking and freezing on me, tried several flavors of Linux, non would stay stable, or keep from locking up on me. Tried Ubuntu, Debian, Suse, Backtrax2, and Fedora etc. notice that the Ubuntu was the most trouble to install, except the servers, but when you try to upgrade the server version to desktop version, again installation freeze.

On the new board I am using the built in VGA, product of nvidia and it still has the same or better quality of using a PCI express card. When I fired up the new board I still had to reset and change my display options, and once I did that, (SAMSUNG 793, 19" monitor), I could pick the resolution that I wished to have, otherwise it would default to 800x600.

So now I have a Debian system, and a Mint system. The Debian I set up as a LAMP server, and it was actually quite easier than Ubuntu. I still have 1 computer that is WinXP.

Hi
Thanks for the replies
Yes I purchased a new (to me ) computer for ninety pounds because I wanted to have a PC for mint and a PC for xp.
My failed PC was built by me as an exercise about 5years ago using second hand bits from ebay total cost about 50 pounds.
Hardware items I understand software leaves me confused and the wife wants a PC which is reliable.
I have a new hard drive coming 80 Gig which I will install and load mint.

Can you elaborate on the comment concerning software failure causing this problem . The motherboard seems ok as I can load and use mint from a CD likewise I can use a restricted XP from a CD But I cannot find the C drive which is the original hard disc
Thanks again
Frank

Can you browse the C: drive from the Linux Live CD? If you can then its unlikely a hardware/hard drive failure. That failure, is a classic Windoze OS failure. Usually some file has become corrupted, deleted, etc, that causes the OS not to load.

I'm not saying its not a hardware failure, but immediately jumping to buying another PC just struck me as odd. Can you install Mint w/o it showing the hard drive as undetectable? Can you mount your XP NTFS drive on the live CD?

IGF

Hi
Running mint from the CD was the only way I could access the web and my C drive cannot be located.
The XP boot disc that I tried only loads a very simple form of Xp.
I also tried to re install XP from the installation disc but the message came up unable to find hard drive.
So I assume that the hard disc is fried and I will try the new hard disc and see if I can load mint.
Last question if I only load mint onto the new disc will I need to format or partition it?
Thanks for all the assistance
Frank

Well, yes, if no existing Linux partitions are present. Mint should prompt you to create partitions and format them during installation, though.

Hi
It's me again and so the saga continues.
Well I purchased a new HD and installed it into my old computer and thought I would load mint version 5.
I put the disc in my DVD RW Drive altered my BIOS to boot from this drive switched on and nothing happened. Tried a few times and them thought I would try my old disc from ebay for mint 4. This loaded successfully and I'm now running mint version 4 on my old computer.
When I put the new disc in my DVD drive all that appears on the mint screen is the symbol for the disc and says that the disc is empty before I complain to the suppliers am I missing something .
Oh yes when I right click on the symbol for the disc and examine the properties this is given as unknown and trying to open the disc results in failure.
Thanks for any assistance

I suggest you download an ISO image yourself, verify it (check the MD5 checksum) and burn it.