From what I can tell from the bootinfo script you have three drives. When you first turn your computer on there should something saying to hit some key to select boot device option, possibly the esc key. If so, hit the said key and select the drive that linux is on and the grub menu should come up.

Your bootinfoscript shows Mint installed on the same drive on which you have xp. As stated above, you need to set that drive to first boot priority in the BIOS. If you have windows 8, you usually (but not always) have an option to disable Secure Boot and/or enable Legacy Boot.

@Dman58
I think that if it does not work booting the program from the live cd, then there is no point of installing it. But maybe I'm overlooking something.

@yancek
I don't seem to have those options in my bios.

@colorpurple21859 @yancek
This machine got 2 ssd's. One has windows 8 and linux mint, the other my documents.
Are these the settings we are looking for in the bios?

How to select the drive Linux is on?

No need to change the boot priority, as long as there is no disk in the optical drive the ssd will boot. As stated above both OS's are on a single ssd and your Documents are on another but the bios is only picking up one ssd from the photo.

Why not put linux on the seperate ssd?

That conflicts with the bootinfoscript output which shows windows 7/8 on sda (120GB drive) as well as on sdb (250GB drive) while showing windows 2000/xp on sdc where Linux Mint also resides (sdc5). You have the Grub bootloader installed in the master boot record of sdc and the core image file apparently where it should be. The grub.cfg file also points to the correct partition. Might be UEFI problem. I've never used Secure Boot so don't know how you would find that option if it does exist.

quite puzzling this.

sdc is an external USB hhd which I use for backups. It asked me if that was a removable disk. Then the advice is to install the bootloader on the removable disk?

I don't know why it would say windows 8 is on the second ssd. I got this laptop with windows 8 already installed on ssd 1. Then changed the malfunctioning ssd 2 for a new one and just copied my files on it. When trying to install linux I just took the suggested disk and partition. Why would it want to install on a removable hhd or on the ssd2.

I just don't know what to make of this.

Why not? People do that all the time. You installed Mint on the external and its bootloader to the mbr of that same drive pointing to the partition on which Mint exists. Your grub.cfg file entry also points to the corect partition. In order to boot it, you would need to set it to first boot priority in the BIOS. People often do this if they have windows or some other OS on an internal drive and don't want to accidentally overwrite something on it when installing, for example Linux Mint. They then just select the drive they want to boot from the BIOS on boot. I've read a number of posts here where people have several different operating systems, each the only OS on the hard drive aND select which drive they want on boot. One of the main reasons people do this or, at least one reason is because they have a new computer with a manufacturer warranty and if it is an OEM, they often won't honor a warrant if you have a bootloader in the primary drive which they did not put there.

When you do that, you don't really know what is happening as it is pretty much an auto-install from that point. Using the 'something else' options gives a lot more information on what is happening and also gives more control.

The bootinfoscript shows you have windows 7/8 partitions on both sda (120GB drive) and sdb (250GB drive).

You may think you installed Mint to one of the other drives where you wanted it, but it is on the 500GB drive.

Most automatic installers look for the largest area of free space to install within, which in your case was most likely on the usb hard drive. If you want to install to the drive with windows 8, run defrag and then shrink the windows 8 partition with either the disk management in windows 8, or using gparted from the live cd to create free space needed for the linux mint installation. Might have to set virtual memory setting to none to allow shrinking of partition.

Thanks for those anwers.

I want one ssd for the os's and one for the documents. I guess moving the installation is not possible, so how do I uninstall and start over again?

Googling for how to uninstall linux from a dual boot, shows that uninstalling is mainly about:
- deleting the linux partitions
- fixing the windows bootmanager

My windows boot manager seems to be still intact, so my plan is to delete the linux partitions. (And then install Linux Mint with wubi, which seems easyer)
This is what I see in the windows disk manager:
(sorry its in Dutch)

G: is the external iomega usd hhd of 500 gb. F: is the virtual cd created by the same iomega device.

I'm think the 2nd and 3rd partition on G: (schijf 2) are the linux partitions. Does this match with what we see in the repair-cd-export?

The program 'wubi' is called mint4win on Linux Mint. You do understand that doing this means installing Mint as a program inside windows, similar to a virtual install and if windows becomes unbootable so does Mint.

The second and third partitions seem to be the Mint partitions.

I deleted those partitions, all seems fine.

O well thats a shame. I searched for 'mint4win' and see your point. That is not what I want. I hope I will never have to uninstall and fix the windows mbr, because those tutorials look terrifying
http://www.howtogeek.com/141818/how-...your-computer/

Besides that, mint4win is discontinued in mint 16. So thats not even an option anymore.
Seems the windows installer finds it too big to install the iso. Which makes me remember some Joomla extension which where too big to install via the Joomla installer, so it would install a small extension, which would then download the whole thing and install properly.

Would be perfect if there would be a Linux-manager-program which could be installed in Windows, which you can then open and install Linux (versions) the proper way (including partition) from there. And also fixes the mbr on uninstall.

So I'm going to do the cd install again tomorrow and pay particular attention as to which partition I will install Mint on

You could install VirtualBox on windows and then install Mint in VirtualBox. Pretty easy but then again, you have the same problem. If windows crashes or is unbootable there goes your Mint.

I guess, although that would be a lot to expect for something you get for free. Reading some tutorials any reading everything when you are doing the install will go a long way toward preventing any problems.