1. Is your CD/DVD Rom working properly (was it working ok before)?
2. Try googling for your laptop model and boot menu (which key opens a boot menu - on mine it's F12 I think but it may vary). When booting the computer with an installation disk in a CD/DVD ROM, you press/hold the boot menu key to get a list of possible devices to boot from. Then you'd choose your CD/DVD rom.

3. You say it's an old laptop, are you sure it has a DVD-rom as well, perhaps it's just a CD-rom.

It was working on Wednesday when I started this process. I could run Kubuntu from DVD then.

This is what the grub prompt gives me
I hope that means something to someone

As I said before try to find out which function key on your laptop will bring up the boot menu so you can boot oof the install DVD.

It is working now (can boot into Kubuntu). Well apart from the fact that I have the original problem of not killing Vista when I do the install

Now the issue is that the Disk setup (which is unusual in my experience) wants to wipe everything. I was hoping that it would replace the Linux Mint (13) with Kubuntu.
Any idea on how to do this manually.
This is I think the 6th Linux install I have done and the first to be a pain like this.

I get

I have decided to NOT try and manually do this but leave the PC on until someone helps (the small cost of electricity is worth it, for avoiding the immense pain if I get this wrong).
I do have a laptop I can use in the meantime.


BTW I am very grateful for all the help.

check your connections, be sure you give the ROM plenty of time to spin up so it gets it up and running to get the needed information off the ROM for the PC, that maybe it too. boot into BIOS while you have your ROM inside of its drive to give it this time to read the information it needs to boot off it while manually selecting to boot from CD ROM / DVD "port" try a different usb port if that is what it is using, but my experience is it using a USB CD-Drive it needs to spin up first to get the information off it or it will not read it properly.

you have 245GB for Linux with a ext2 type FS you can use for swap and root / on # 5 but a 245GB root is really large actually. to try and split that up for root and (1) user then your other drive for what, home too? BUT i c that it is lvm so ....


it says there you have 850GB to play with on # 4. extended

it tells me that you have two boots one off each HDD /dev/sda and /dev/sdb . WHY?

what windows are you wanting to keep? you got 2 Windows you're using? Y?

Can you reinstall windows too if you have to? if yes then back up everything you want to keep, mostly everything you know that you cannot replace if lost. then wipe everything, both drives.

set up all of your partitions with windows at install with the first drive. At the place it tells you if you want to create partitions, I forget the letters it tells you to use, but create at least 1 GB at begining of /dev/sda for your swap then depending on where you want windows on your HDD create pleanty of room for that to grow depending on how much you'll be using Windows with all of its 1000's of updates that take up too much space, then use the rest for Linux.

on /dev/sda you can split it up give yourself about 1GB for (root) / then the rest for /home then use /dev/sdb for storage drive just add it to your fstab after Linux install.


in like flint ;)

Install windows first get it up and running then because your partitions are already created through windows for /dev/sda then getting Linux installed should be a shinch .. ;)

Are you using the "Manual" option under the Installation Type? Much better to use as it gives you more control. The only Linux partition you have is on the 500GB drive and it is sda5. sda5 is an LVM partition so that is the only place you Mint could be. You also have a very large Extended partition on the 1TB drive where you could create partitions on which to install if you want.

When you get the installation window, do you see the various partitions on both drives? If you do, you should select sda5 on which to install and select to format that partition. If you don't see any partitions there you've got bigger problems. Might be a bad download or a bad burn or other things. Only do that if you do NOT have any data on sda5 as formatting it will remove it for all intents and purposes. The installer for Kubuntu is basically the same as Ubuntu/Mint so you should be familiar with it.

I notice that you have windows on both partitions and it looks like two windows installations as you have partitons marked as boot on both drives. The link below has a detailed tutorial on installing Ubuntu dual boot with windows if you scroll down the page. As far as I can tell, the only difference is the first window where you see "manual" as an option rather than the standard Ubuntu "somthing else" option.

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/u...all-guide.html

Thanks for that (I will try to read it later as childcare is calling me away from the PC).


This is what I can see (see attachment)
Which bits should I delete

your one dirve on /dev/sda is lvm
you could install linux on your other dirve that has all of that free space in extended then install grub(2) on your MBR on /dev/sda hope it sees your 2 Windows installs, it can be fixed afterwards if needed maybe with just update-grub ...

then deal with that LVM thing that I really have no experience with -- maybe someone else does, but it seems being that it is not "real" you may have problems with it if you format it, that other dude may know more about it, but you'd think he'd have said something if he did.

the big questions is do you want a swap drive and where to put that ??? if yes. you could just split that extended and put a 1 GB swap at the begning and use the rest for your install of Linux, then after you get that going then look into that LVM to see what that is all about, if you do not know already.

if you wnat to keep them WINDOWS installs that maybe the safest way to go, Install Linux in your free space, then see what you got afterwards.

BUT IT SAYS LVM is mint -- you could just try deleting that part, it should then put that and the 106 MB together making it one 106+245=351 ish MB (GB) then reEstablish all of that as your Linux install -- instead ..

by deleting it hopefully that install setup will give you a message about the lvm what will happen if you delete it first, two, if you delete it first it will free it up to add that 106 of free space to your Linux that looks like it is ot being used for anything, just wasted space right now as it is.

then later you can Gpart that free space on /dev/sdb for Linux use and windows by making it NTFS so that both will see it and put that into your fstab for Linux,

BUT if windows is using that 106 then leave it alone then just delete that lvm part and reastableish it as linux ext4 then install Linux on that peice of cake ;) :Pengy:

OR you could just tell it to formate that LVM (mint) install then I'd make it ext4 personally, then voli'a you got Linux, MBR is set proper on that install pic /dev/sda --- so yeah -- whats the problem again?

I don't really see any. ;)

Thanks I think I will see what other people say

There are a number of possible options as you have a lot of space on sdb. If you want Kubuntu to replace the Mint install then delete sda5, the LVM partition and in that now unallocated space create a partition for the filesystem and leave 2-4GB to create a swap partition. Before doing this as I said above, you need to get any data you want off the Mint partition because formatting that partition will overwrite your data.

That would be the only partition on sda you could use. Leave the Device for bootloader installation as /dev/sda. sdb has all windows partitions except for the large space at the end of the drive in which you could create partitions to install Kubuntu. It would make more sense to install on sda and use the larger drive for data or backups.