Dual booting with XP problems
 

Hi
As a long term XP user I have been thinking about trying Linux for a long time and with support for XP ending in 6 months I thought it was time to take the plunge.
I tried to burn a CD of Linux but to no avail, i am a 60 year old who although not against new things sometimes struggles.
Anyhow I bought a disc from Ebay with Linux Mint 15 with Cinnamon.
I booted up as a live CD to see what it was like and the first problem I had was the message "Cinnamon has crashed" so i carried on without it. To be honest I havent the slightest idea what Cinammon does so I dont know if I need it or could carry on without it?
Anyhow on to my main problem, my computer has 2 partitions, 50GB and 97GB, I also have a 1TB external drive which I switched off at this time.
I installed Mint although I admit I had no idea when it came to resizing my partitions for Mint, i had read a guide to it but it was far too complicated for me, so I just took a stab at it.
Anyhow it installed ok but when I tried to reboot I got some message about "grub" which I had never seen before, I also tried to boot to XP again and then Ghost XP back to no avail. I did notice somehow I now had 4 partitions instead of two?
In the end I had to reinstall XP and that is now running again thankfully.
It seems I am doomed to continue with XP cos installing Mint seems way too complicated, the annoying thing is I managed to dual boot Ubuntu fine cos that was a lot less complicated than installing Mint, i didnt even need a disc, just downloaded Ubuntu and clicked Wubi and it was done for me. I just didnt like Ubuntu.
Does anyone know an idiots guide to dual booting Mint? Until I know i like it and can understand it I do not want to completely replace XP.
Sorry this is long winded but I find it hard to explain things sometimes.

a operating system ISO can NOT be "burend" as a normal data dvd /cd

you MUST use the "burn as image" setting

XP by DEFAULT can NOT , repeat NOT "burn" a iso!!!!

the built in "burn cd " can NOT MAKE A INSTALL DVD !!!!!!
you need a third party program
something like "Nero" if you already bought it -- it is NOT free
or the FREE program " CDburner XP"
http://cdburnerxp.se/en/home
( this is a VERY highly recommended program , and will burn " as image" a install dvd iso )

also STAY AWAY from "wubi" unless you want problems


partitioning a drive is really not that hard
a bit complicated - yes- but really not hard

here is a FREE and VERY GOOD tool for partitioning
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
Gparted live CD is one of the BEST tools out there .
the manual and documentation
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/documentation.php

this is a bit old but still good

"A Beginner's Guide to Dual Booting Linux Mint and Windows XP"
http://linuxgazette.net/136/lazar.html

the Mint forume
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=137389

as you do a bit of reasearch you wil lfind that there are TWO main ways to "dual boot" with XP

I LIKE to use the "dd" method yes it dates back to the windows 98 days
but it uses the windows bootloader to "chaianload" to the linux install
and in the LONG RUN is a lot more convenient
however the 10+ year old XP guides have you using a 3.5 in floppy disk

that is not needed any longer
-- YES this will take a bit of time on your part t.You will have to learn some NEW things
And learning things is fun ( most of the time)


LinuxMint is a nice "new to linux" operating system
however the Cinnamon desktop manager
( on windoes XP the Desktop manager is "windows Explorer" and you DO NOT have a choice on changing it

in a Linux install there are MANY desktop managers to choose from
Gnome and KDE are the two main ones with Cinnamon. a version of Gnome

also there is lxde and xfce
Mint has dvd install iso's with the LXDE desktop manager
this is a good choice for older XP computers that have less RAM than new computers

Sorry i put this in the wrong post

Thanks for your reply John, I dont need to burn a disc as I have one and I always use "CDBurner XP" in any case.
Maybe I worded my post wrong I have no problem partitioning a drive I just didnt know which one to partition to put Mint in and if i should partition my "C" drive or for safety sake another one?
As Cinammon is a desktop manager can you just download another one into Mint to see which one you like?
The main thing tho is i still do not know why, when I had installed Mint along with XP, when I tried to boot neither Mint or XP would boot and I got this "grub" message which i have never seen before, and I do not want to have to reinstall XP all over again.
Anyhow John thanks again for the reply.

That is your windows xp system partition. It would be a bad idea to partition it although you could shrink it if you don't have space or a partition on which to put Mint. The wubi program you referred to above when using Ubuntu has a comparable program in Mint called mint4.win which is a windows executable that you can use to install Mint inside xp as a program just as you did with wubi for Ubuntu.

Can you boot from the Mint CD? If you can, when you get to a graphical desktop, you should see an icon for a terminal (mouse over the icons to find it) and open it and run the command: sudo fdisk -l(Lower Case Letter L in the command) This will output drive partition information you can post here. It will tell which partitions are windows and which are Linux

If you had 4 partitions after installing Mint, that would be the previous two from xp plus the Mint partition plus a swap partition.
GRUB (GRand Unified Bootloader) is the bootloader used on Mint and most other Linux systems. The reason you saw grub on boot is that it was not installed properly.

You can switch to a different Desktop manager after you install. There are numerous tutorials online explaining how to install Mint. The link below takes you to the mint site and is 50+ pages long and incredibly detailee, includes images of the install steps. It is specific to Mat (a different Desktop manager) but otherwise, the install steps should be the same. You can probably find video tutorials if you just do a search "how to dual boot Linux Mint and xp".

http://www.linuxmint.com/documentati...glish_13.0.pdf

Thanks for your reply Vancek,it was a great help, cheers.

Colin

Don't know if they will help, but here's some rough notes I made ages ago when I was dual-booting XP and Linux:

Yea I don't have much more information to give, but all I can say is; don't by any CD's from anybody except from the maker of that CD, so that money goes to supporting them.

Best way to optain Linux ISO's is directory from the website and burn as an image file as said above, but again buying a CD directory from the developers does help them promote and maintain.

As for formating, Linux Mint will give you the ability to shrink C and install linux Side by Side with windows, that way you can log into both.

Glad you came to the light and welcome to the forums.

Thanks for your replies, I am going to give it a go, going to try to install Mint with the Mate desktop but I am not very hopeful cos at my age things dont sink in as quick as they used to.
If I can find a way to install Itunes on Mint I might even ditch XP altogether but that may be going too far.
I saw something called PlayonLinux while I was messing about with Ubuntu, hopefully I can use that with Mint?
Anyhow thanks for all your help with what to you must be stupid questions :D

you do not
Apples Itunes will not run !
http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10t...for-itunes/450

now for just putting music in a ipod ( like my Nano )
there is
GTK-pod

and the built in options in the Linux music player Rhythmbox

Yea like John said, you'll find alot of apps that are windwos, but won't run on linux. Some of those apps can be ran under wine (which is a compatibility layer). Best results is always to find a Linux alternative.

If it will Run on Ubuntu, it will run on Mint (Unless your using Mint Debian). They both have a software center that you can browse all the free software apps, but Ubuntu app center is more polished though (last I checked).

But I know new things become hard to learn, but science has always proven once you get the basic curve, then everything is come closer to down hill. So stick in there and give it some time.

Playonlinux is available in Mint as well. Mint is based on Ubuntu so Software packaged for Ubuntu is typically also available on Mint.
I tried to get iTunes to run on a Mint install for a friend of mine sometime ago through playonlinux (or directly in Wine, don't remember) and actually got it to run, but it was pretty unusable.

One other small comment I'd like to make before you do your next installation attempt is that Linux Mint 15 will only receive security updates for a very short period of time. You may want to consider using a so-called long-term-support version. The most recent one is Linux Mint 13, which will be supported until 2017...

Hi :) http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-in-all-35750/

jamison20000e
a question

it is looking like most of your 411 posts point to this one very unuseful post
this one post is being pointed to so often that it is looking like is is a bot and not a real person

It's me (and thank you,) I will point to the first link in my signature from now on plus that way can post a better hell;).

Oh well, I tried again. Installed Linux 15 this time and seemed to go ok but when I went to boot it I got the "grub" msg again.
I couldnt even put a Ghost back on so had to reinstall XP.
I think that is the end of my adventure with Linux. I hoped it would be reasonably straightforward to install but to me it isnt.
Anyhow thanks for all your advice.