I have a blank hard drive and am trying to install Linux Mint/Cinnamon 64bit, Version 17. I click "Install" and receive the error message "No Root File System. Please Correct This From The Partitioning Menu". Trying to find an answer for this issue has only resulted in ludicrous suggestions without any real instructions, as if nobody has ever had this issue. Please provide precise instructions on how to make a drive "root" / so I can install this OS. Thanks.

At what stage in the installation does this happen? Have you already chosen the drive you want to use, or set up a partitioning layout?

Generally the installer follows what it wants but asks you along the way.

At some point it should have set up your local hard drive. Did it do that and did you agree to some area being mounted by /root? Did you manually edit it to do some other task.

In some cases blank disks may fool the installer. You may have to create partitions and then reboot to the installer. (rare)

There are several options in the Installation Type window. If you have selected "Something Else" as an option you would be required to select the partition to install to. The main window will show a list of partitions. You select one by clicking it with the mouse, then click Change just below the window and an Edit partiton window will open. There is a Mount point option and an entry box to the right with a down arrow. Click it and select / by mouse clicking and select OK.

You can see this in the tutorial below which also explains the installing. This specific tutorial explains using GPT partitioning also. If you don't use GPT, ignore that part but it does show how to edit partitions.

http://www.tecmint.com/install-linux-mint-17/

Followed the instructions exactly for creating root, efi, swap and home and applied the settings. I then selected "Install Linux Mint". I get as far as selecting a network connection and then get a blank workspace with no partitions or hard drives to select. At that point clicking "Install" will simply return the error "No Root File System, Please Correct This From The Partitioning Menu". I have tried creating different ISO disks of the same version and still nothing.

Did you (also) follow the guide for steps 17-22 ?. You have to do that for each partition - most importantly assign the mount point.

Then you forgot to mark 1 of the partitions as bootable.

The last screen I see before getting the error message "no root file system found" is "Preparing to Install Linux Mint". I never see the page "Installation Type". I will try it again in about a week when I return from vacation. Thanks for everyone's help and suggestions.

I was able to install the disk image on another computer and didn't have to go through all of the preliminary steps to set up "device partitions" and "flags".

i've seen a similar error before, usually it means you forgot to assign a partition a mount point of / (which is the 'root' filesystem

You should never have to do any of that on Mint, it's optional.

that depends on the distribution, but yes, quite a few modern distributions do have a default partition setup that is used unless you explicitly tell the installer otherwise, ubuntu (and I guess mint) are two of them.

Could it be that you have multiple drives? Could it be that the /boot area is too far up in the drive?

Well I don't know what's happening - I just deleted all the partitions on a laptop (my definition of "empty", but it does have a partition table).
Mint17 defaulted to "Erase disk and instal Mint" - and it did successfully.

The Mint installer asks you to assign a root partition after you changed the partitions. So when you see the partitions listed, right-click on the one you want to use for the root fs and choose "mount as /".

It is something I usually forget when installing Mint and it puzzled me as well. It is also a bit strange policy to ask this taking into account the user type Mint focuses at. I am not sure it is also asked when you leave the partition scheme as proposed by Mint. I changed it because Mint put the swap as first partition. I don't like that, I want sda1 to be /.

Another issue I had with Mint 17 not long ago was that Mint would not boot after installing from DVD. It ran OK as live distro, it installed OK without any error message. But large parts of the root fs were not installed. I received the same error message as the OP. After installing from USB the problem was solved. I blamed the DVD, although I was amazed that it is possible to run and install perfectly whithout any sign of reading errors, while apparently some files were damaged.

jlinkels