Linux Mint 13 install doesn't detect partition table.
 

A little background, this week with the release of Windows 8 my friend has been helping me adapt to the world of Linux. I have been using Linux Mint 13 on my laptop and I nearly now am able to do everything I did on Windows. I even learned to SSH into my school account! :) Anywho, tonight I decided I would install it on my HP tower as well, hopefully to set up SSH and FTP servers or something of that nature. I put in the live disk, booted that and connected to the internet. I clicked to install and when I got to the screen where I would normally select a partition to use, the table was blank and I was unable to preform any tasks. Additionally the only available device was /dev/sda. I did endless research and all I was able to find was running

sudo gpart /dev/sda

may be able to recreate a partition table but it is taking a very very long time to run.It would be greatly appreciated if someone could offer some information on what the cause of this may be.

Thanks,
Zurukea

Try sudo fdisk -l.

Is the Windows partition formatted NTFS? That might have a bearing on this.

I get the following output:

So honestly I'm not sure due to the "NTFS/exFAT"

Well, fdisk does see the partitions and, Windows being Windows, HPFS/NTFS/exFAT probably means NTFS. My best guess--and I do mean "guess"--is that the gparted command was not seeing the NTFS partitions for some reason.

If you are going to blow away your Windows install and replace it with Linux, your easiest bet is to let the Mint install routine automatically partition and format the drive for you.

Here's a nice tutorial: http://www.howtoforge.com/the-perfec...x-mint-13-maya

If you go to YouTube and search for "install Linux Mint," you will find a number of videos.

I can't remember if cfdisk is on the Mint CD, but you could try it from the command line and see. If it is, I have always found it a little friendlier than fdisk; for example, it reports partition sizes in human-readable terms.

Thank you for assisting me tonight!

To start from the end, cfdisk causes a fatal error and just closes.

As for the installation, after the screen where I confirm I am connected to the internet and I have the disk space I am brought to a new screen titled "Installation Type" It appears to be some kind of partition manager that allows me to select a device where my only option is "/dev/sda". I am familiar with this screen and usually I would delete all existing partitions and make a new one for Linux however for some reason I am given no existing partitions or free space to install Mint onto. I will post a screenshot if requested.

It seems to me that, err, it's not detecting the hard drive properly? Honestly both my friend and I are at a loss.

The last Mint install I did was Mint 12 which had as the third step, Installation Type. The three options are install alongside, erase disk and install Mint and Something Else. Do you see this page and if so, which option(s) have you tried. The next step would be the one you refer to. If you aren't seeing any partitions, you may have a bad download or burn. Did you do the md5 checksum on the download?

I know of the page you speak, the installer usually detects the current version of windows and ask you how you want to install Linux with regards to Windows already being there. However, in this situation that screen makes no appearance. I used the cd last week and it worked just find.

I will admit to ignorance and say I have no idea what a md5 checksum is, I'm quite quite new to all of this.

md5 checksum for Linux Mint:

http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/346

Do you get the blank window showing no partitions when you select any of the three options? Are you planning to keep windows on the machine?
If you see only /dev/sda in the main window, you could click on it to highlight it in green, then click the Add tab at the bottom of the window to create a new partition. When you do that you will get a new window telling you that this action will remove all current partitions which will remove your windows partitions!!

It seems curious to me that the partitions don't show in the installers partitioner but do with fdisk?? If it worked as it was supposed to a week ago, I have no other ideas.

To help explain I will post screenshots of exactly what I see during the installation procress.

After I select the language I see this screen:
http://i.imgur.com/xy6O6.png

Then after pressing Continue I see this:
http://i.imgur.com/l61Sx.png

This is truly odd. I must agree that the partitions are not being detected by the installer for some reason. I've installed Linux on at least a dozen computers (not counting VMs when partitions were present) and never encountered this. Hopefully someone who has seen this will find this thread.

What version of Windows is running on this box?

It's a complete shot in the dark, but, at this point, I'd take a look at the disk under Windows and run some of the Windows disk maintenance tools on it Where the tools are located and their precise name depend on which version of Windows you are running. In my Windows 7 box, highlighting a drive (such as C:\) and right-clicking brings up a menu that includes a "Properties" item. Selecting that item includes a "Tools" dialog.

You might also take a look at it with Trinity Rescue Kit, a Live CD distribution designed with troubleshooting Windows in mind.

Sorry that my responses are mildly delayed as it has been a very busy week for me suddenly and this project sort of got pushed to the back burner. I had been running the Mint CD in live boot mode for the few days this has been going on and upon your recommendation of going into Windows and checking the partitions, Windows died. It starts to boot, instantly blue screens, and dies... I have a few ideas on what I suspect this could be but I may have an idea that I'm yet to try but I will sometime tonight.

I have a Windows 7 disk that I will boot and work as though I am preparing a brand new install, the Windows installer to my knowledge has a partitioning tool that I may be able to use to delete the current partitions and create a new one that Linux may be able to detect and install itself on.

Semi-related, when I was posting those screen shots I thought that I would need somewhere to store them so I plugged in an external hard drive as I couldn't find my flash drive. I started the installer to take the shots but it was different this time as the installer detected the external hard drive and was requesting to install on that. While this is an option I have no intentions of doing in this way but at least I know how the installer is fine, and that the issue is 99% most likely to do with the hard drive. It could be a bios thing but I did my own troubleshooting there and I don't believe it to be so. I'll get back to this thread tonight, at latest tomorrow morning and let you know if this is a fix, and for the benefit of anyone else who may have encountered this issue.

EDIT: I have to go home over this weekend and I probably won't get to it any time soon. Thanks for the help everyone has given this far and I will to give some results asap.

Every possible cause that you rule out is one step closer to a solution.

1. Using Windows installer to delete the existing partitions does not work.

2. Using Windows installer to delete the existing partitions and create new empty ones does not work.

3. Swearing does not work.

4. Ubuntu does not boot...

I regret the decision, but this is my highest spec'd computer and I can't really handle all this downtime. so I am installing Windows... 7 at least! I had planned to do experimenting with computer clusters and high performance computing. I was planning to use this as the master node as all the other machines are approx. 2 core, 2 Ghz units. I guess I will have to use the best one of those for the master node.

I wish I could have figured it out but it seems like there are just no options left.

Same problem here
 

I have tried Linux Mint 12 and 13, neither can "see" the hard drive at all. gparted and fdisk both work, I have deleted my Windows partitions, but the "Install Linux Mint" command comes up with a blank list when it gets to choosing a partition.

I have an HP Phoenix machine.

Insert a blank hard drive and try to install it in there. If it is just for experimenting a second hand hard drive will do.

Good luck to you anyway