Installation problem
 

I am trying to install KUbuntu on an old laptop. It wanted to overwrite my Vista partition so I am doing a manual partition.
I get "no root file system is defined Please correct this from the partition menu".

Did you set the "/" mount point?

I have the following partitions
/dev/sda
/dev/sda1 fat16 65 MB used 33 MB
/dev/sda2 ntfs 10737 MB used unkown
/dev/sda3 ntfs 243982 MB used unkown
/dev/sda6 swap 105 MB used unknown
/dev/sdb
/dev/sdb1 fat16 65 MB used 33 MB
/dev/sda2 ntfs 10742 MB used 682 MB
/dev/sda3 ntfs 138954 MB used 36691 MB
/dev/sda5 ext4 850441 MB used unknown

(the above are typed)

No I don't know how to. I am trying to via the prepare partition screen but when I click on change it doesn't let me make the swap(?) a mount point

Are there any other systems on the computer? Can you wipe out the whole drive?

There is a Vista system which I was hoping to keep so no I don't want to wipe the whole drive.

If you're not confident using linux partitioning tools, boot into your Vista installation and delete all non-vista partitions. Then boot off the linux installation system and once you've got to the partition tool, create one swap partition and one root mount point "/".

Please note that if you've already have 4 windows partitions you'll have to remove one. There can only be 4 primary partitions. In that case you'd have to have 3 primary partitions and the 4th would be "extended" taking all the remaining space on the disk. Then within the extended partition, you can create as many partitions as you want.

Sadly I can't boot into Vista now I get
"Error no such device
Entering grub resecue mood"

What happened is that I tried to overwrite my Mint with Ubuntu but instead I got 3 Linux partitions. I then deleted them all (after back up) and today I tried to install KUbuntu for the 3rd time. Sadly it wanted me to overwrite Windows and I had problems with the install. I will have to try again tomorrow.

Since it problematic to boot any Linux with a windows bootloader, you were probably using the Ubuntu Grub bootloader to boot. If you deleted the partitions on which you had the Linux (Mint, Ubuntu) boot files, you deleted almost all the boot files which is probably why you can't boot vista. When you try the install again, you might try opening a terminal when you get to the Desktop. Try running the following commands and posting the output here. This will give more details than what you copied here on your initial post.

sudo fdisk -l AND sudo parted -l (Lower case Letter L in both commands)

what are them 2 for? 1 swap and 1 ext4 -- why not go Linux with them?

after you get Linux into that you maybe able to save that win vista OS. Y I have no idea... :/

Sadly I cannot even boot from cd now, it just says grub error

Kubuntu is to large to fit on a CD, did you mean a DVD? If you are getting a grub error, you most likely still have the BIOS boot priority still set to the hard drive. You need to first change that.

If you get it booted, select the Manual Installation Type. When you see the screen with the various partitions, highlight the one you want to use and then click the Change tab below that window and you will get an Edit a partition window. There is a Mount point option with a text entry area to the right. Click the drop down menu and select /, the symbol for the root filesystem.

Yes I meant DVD and I think it is set to boot from DVD first

esc or F1 or some other key depending on PC/LT to get to BIOS, sometime you'll see what key to hit to get into BIOS on boot up, then go from there because it is not booting into your round shiny thing with data on it .... :D

When I boot I get
"Boot from ANHI CD-ROM
error no such device: 5(lots of numbers)
Entering rescue mode...
grub resecue>