Mint Installer not recognising Windows 7 Partitions

gking92 · 10-06-2015, 07:24 AM

I am trying to install Linux Mint 17.2 Cinnamon from a live USB alongside Windows 7.

This is how my partitions appear in Windows: http://i.imgur.com/nIRHInj.png

Obviously, I am trying to install Mint to the 331 GB unallocated partition. However, the Mint installer tells me that it cannot find any other operating systems. When I then click through using the "something else" install option, the installer claims that the hard disk is not partitioned and that the entire 1 TB disk is available for the install.

Any ideas?

yancek · 10-06-2015, 07:40 AM

What does GParted show from Mint. You can open it when you boot to the Mint Desktop. Post that here if you can.
Did you do an md5 checksum on the Mint iso before putting it on the flash drive?
Is windows 7 installed using MBR?

gking92 · 10-06-2015, 08:39 AM

I did briefly try to get GParted working in terminal earlier. My command was just seemingly ignored and nothing printed to the screen. I can try again though now. I did also quickly take a look using fdisk which also seemed to present a similar situation as the installer, detecting no existing partitions of the drive.

I also checked the partition style for Windows 7 and it is MBR.

gking92 · 10-06-2015, 09:01 AM

In fact, when I start GParted, I get an error message about containing GPT signatures.

vincix · 10-06-2015, 09:33 AM

Have you tried chkdsk in Windows before installing mint? Maybe it would fix your partition table.

gking92 · 10-06-2015, 10:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vincix

Have you tried chkdsk in Windows before installing mint? Maybe it would fix your partition table.

Tried it. No luck.

Additionally, I was wrong when I said above that fdisk wasn't recognising the Windows partitions. Both the main and system partitions you can see in the original screenshot do show up there, and I can access the Windows files through live version of Mint.

I did wonder if this answer http://askubuntu.com/questions/24964.../473073#473073 that I found may be relevant. However, when I try "gdisk /dev/sta" an error message along the lines of "problem opening /dev/sta! Error is 13. You must run this program as root or use sudo!"

vincix · 10-06-2015, 12:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gking92

Tried it. No luck.

Additionally, I was wrong when I said above that fdisk wasn't recognising the Windows partitions. Both the main and system partitions you can see in the original screenshot do show up there, and I can access the Windows files through live version of Mint.

I did wonder if this answer http://askubuntu.com/questions/24964.../473073#473073 that I found may be relevant. However, when I try "gdisk /dev/sta" an error message along the lines of "problem opening /dev/sta! Error is 13. You must run this program as root or use sudo!"

And why haven't you tried running it with sudo, then?

I'm really interested in how this ends up, so if you eventually get to a solution, please post a message.

gking92 · 10-06-2015, 02:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vincix

And why haven't you tried running it with sudo, then?

I'm really interested in how this ends up, so if you eventually get to a solution, please post a message.

I did just realise that it is as simple as adding that to the front of the command.

And yes, proceeding to follow through the advice on the askubuntu answer linked above does indeed work and the installer now recognises my Windows partitions!