newbie probs, installed mint 13 sat, downloaded a few games. did not realize that I already had WINE installed. tried to install again, froze up at 87%, 79% something else? went to uninstall the download, will not allow. Unistalled wine, or tried to stop the stupid mistake I made...now it is froze up, and further downloads are froze up as well...how do i fix my screw up?

try uninstaling wine with termial,.. that should tell you what is wrong.

Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), is another process using it?
this is the msg I get in terminal . sudo apt-get remove wine..
at least this is a start. MAYBE I should find out what is already loaded...did not know...cocked things up right proper

thx for info, not locked up now, Wine is still installed, great!,,,however, whenever I go to software manager and go to GAMES or any other category, it does not list items I can install, only what IS INSTALLED....cannot get it to let me do it...any suggestions? tried umpteen different times...no idea how to fix whatever is wrong....

is that a typo ?
or did you install 13 when 15 is the current
or is this the "long term support" version .

I have the MINT 13 cinnamon version, Wine is not locked up any longer, still have the wine that was with pkg on mint 13 cinnamon. Still cannot use the software mgr thing to download...ANYTHING...on games category shows only what I have downloaded. AND stuff I downloaded and deleted...( incl dancing penguins on screen..it never worked so I deleted it) so that is what I have...still like the mint 13, but now it is not working as hoped to download all those free programs...boo hoo

just tried it again, now I cannot load anything from any of the categories,,,when i clik on any category, it will come up with only things that I currently have in the mint 13 preloaded stuff...no idea what kind of thing I did when I tried to load wine and it locked up. when I restarted pc it seemed to take care of that, but now I am where nothing is available to me to get...dont have a clue. this all reminds me of going to a cedar rapids area jr college and learning DOS...what fun. not really.

can you post the hardware specs
this sounds like this is a rather OLD computer with not enough ram

or

a computer SO VERY VERY NEW that the hardware is NOT supported yet by the rather older mint 13 ( guessing this IS the "Long Term Support" -LTS )

what I have should handle it, a DELL C521, it has an 80gb hard drive, 1.87 ghz, 1.5gb ram. so if I understand it should not have any probs to speak of to run mint 13. I am getting pretty much disgusted with all the hoopla about having it on my pc...lots of problems.
My internet hookup is not working off and on, and there is no place that I can find on mint 13 to re connect to internet...geez, that sure is handy. AND.....when I wanted to go to my WINDOWS XP to fix internet not being on or whatever...keeps going to MINT13 no matter what I try. I need to be able to get to all my docs etc on my pc which are on WINDOWS. I installed the MINT13 alongside WINDOWS...if this keeps up I am going to delete or uninstall MINT13 and go back to windows, which I dont really want to do. But at this pt I am at a loss, cannot go to windows, cannot download anything, cant connect to internet if there is a problem....this is getting stranger by the day...getting discouraged.

another option I have thought of, maybe I should go to the back room, download MINT 15 or maybe what I wanted in the first place PINGUY 12.04 and install alongside WIN XP....maybe that would be a better choice????? Who knows, did not know i would need a PHD in comp science to use the computer using LINUX. It all sounded so user friendly and all...but I dont have the patience it would seem. I want to belong to the linux community and use it over windows, truly I do, but there are problems that they need to fix. Namely how to switch between windows xp and linux, and internet hookup being able to be fixed. that would be a great place for them to start. Other than that, internet surfing was faster, I like the streamlined use of linux mint13 and all, but if you do not have the know how it is hard to figure out.....will see if I can get some answers and not do anything rash like uninstall or anything. I think I can live with this until I get some answers to my not being able to download, cannot figure out how to go back to the windows side of pc, and hookup to internet when probs arise.

normally installing one of the major distributions is not hard
if dual booting with the soon to be unsupported XP service pack 3 ( sp1 and 2 are already unsupported )

some reading is NEEDED and you have to decide on HOW you are going to boot

i learned a LONG time ago to not fight the WAR with Microsoft in dual booting

i let Windows have the First partition on the FIRST drive and the MBR on the first drive
with XP you CAN REALLY use XP's bootloader to chainload to mint
( i like to use the "dd" method and use XP's boot.ini - as you would have for dual booting XP and Win98)

or

you can replace MS's bootloader and use Grub in Mint to boot
( and HAVE TO reinstall ms's bootloader if you remove linux using the windows XP install cd !!!!!!! )


then decide on space
it sounds like a single drive
depending on just what version ox XP this is . you should be able to shrink the xp install and install mint to the NEWLY freed up space

the Mint install guide has a lot of photos and is rather good

now
there IS A KNOWN ISSUE with "dual booting with windows"
IF there is a "recovery" partition at the very front of the drive
mint and every other linux distro will use THAT and NOT the real windows install partition

you " should" have a boot option for windows in the boot menu from mint
but it might NOT not work - if you have a windows "recovery" partition


take a break for a bit
-- go have a beer ( or like) relax, then TOMORROW !!! re go over the mint install guide .

http://www.linuxmint.com/documentation.php

mint 13 LTS is starting to get a bit "old" ( just older versions of programs , but updated with the security fixes)
but is supported until 2017

With mint 15 ,in about a year you will need to install mint 16

since mint 13 is an older distro, I originally wanted PINGUY 12.04 but had problems loading it instead of having to settle for the mint 13 which did load. NOW.....how do i unistall mint13? maybe I can load with the pinguy and then have better luck and do a partion pc with winxp....and not have to become a computer programmer in the process...HOW DO I UNISTALL MINT13 FROM COMPUTER AND LOAD PINGUY IN IT PLACE?????

ALSO, HOW DO I ACCESS MY USB FLASH DRIVE ON MINT????? there is no my computer that I can find to access it so I can do the install of pinguy.......this is getting to me....SCREAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM....ARGH!

I HAVE RESET EVERYTHING BACK TO DEFAULT SETTINGS.....NOTHING HAS CHANGED...I AM SO VERY VERY VERY DISGUSTED AND DISAPPOINTED WITH ALL THIS. I THOUGHT THAT LINUX WAS GOING TO BE EASY TO USE....NOT A FULL TIME JOB. IF I EVER GET THIS OFF OF THIS PC, I AM NOT SURE I WILL EVER LOAD ANOTHER....ARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH. THERE HAS TO BE A SIMPLE FIX, GOTTA BE. i CANNOT BELIEVE I AM THE ONLY NEWBIE WHO HAS BEEN FACED WITH THIS IN THE HISTORY OF USING MINT 13

Having trouble following what you have done fast enough to help, need to stop you from flailing around anymore and doing more damage.
I use Linux dual boot with XP on one machine, without all these problems.

1. When you have boot problems you re-install the boot loader.
To get just windows booting, re-install the Windows boot loader from the Windows install disk. You do not need to remove Linux to do this. You can even still boot Linux after doing this by going through the Linux install disk.
To get the GRUB (or LILO) boot loader, re-install GRUB (or LILO) from the Linux install disk.

2. Boot the Linux install disk, get to the command prompt.
Use fdisk to LOOK at the partitions and print here the listing, so the rest of us can have a clue as to the actual disk state.

3. There is no uninstaller for Linux, that is a Windows concept for programs installed in Windows.
To remove any OS installation,
- Remove the OS boot option from the boot menus using the tools for that boot program.
- Reformat that drive partition to some filesystem. Make sure to reformat the correct partition or else you will erase your Windows OS instead. I am nervous about telling this to people who flail about because it is almost certain they will do something like that, and you cannot undo this (maybe, but it is another problem you don't need).
- A partition tool can remove the Linux partition and give the space to some other partition, OR just keep the partition for data. Do not do this if there is any possibility that you are too inexperienced because you could much more damage. Find someone who knows how. Most kids these day could do it, but it is not something you just poke at until it works.

4. I suspect you did not install alongside Windows, but overwrite something, or have got involved with that recovery partition. I did partitioning by hand, so I know exactly which was the recovery partition and which was the Windows OS partition.

5. Automated install programs can easily get confused and screw things up.
Linux tries to work with a wider range of possible scenarios than Windows (which tries to limit the world to just Windows stuff). The special cases require hand examination and some editing. Those recovery partitions are one of those exceptions because every manufacturer did it different were not consistent even within their own machines. We need to see the listings of the affected program to help with this.
For the boot loader we need to see the boot loader configuration file.