At first it worked fine when booting up; I was able to select Win Vista or Linux with no problems. Some time later Win Vista did not appear as a startup choice, although Linux seems to work fine with one exception; there is a problem with updates. Here is the log:
++ Launching mintUpdate
++ Starting refresh
++ Auto-refresh timer is going to sleep for 30 minutes, 0 hours and 0 days
++ Found 2 recommended software updates
++ Refresh finished
++ MintUpdate is in tray mode, performing auto-refresh
++ Auto-refresh timer is going to sleep for 30 minutes, 0 hours and 0 days
++ Starting refresh
-- Error in checkAPT.py, could not refresh the list of updates
++ MintUpdate is in tray mode, performing auto-refresh
++ Auto-refresh timer is going to sleep for 30 minutes, 0 hours and 0 days
++ Starting refresh
-- Error in checkAPT.py, could not refresh the list of updates
++ Starting refresh
-- Error in checkAPT.py, could not refresh the list of updates
++ Starting refresh
-- Error in checkAPT.py, could not refresh the list of updates
++ MintUpdate is in tray mode, performing auto-refresh
++ Auto-refresh timer is going to sleep for 30 minutes, 0 hours and 0 days
++ Starting refresh
-- Error in checkAPT.py, could not refresh the list of updates
++ Starting refresh
-- Error in checkAPT.py, could not refresh the list of updates
++ Starting refresh
-- Error in checkAPT.py, could not refresh the list of uponedates
++ Starting refresh
++ Found 2 recommended software updates
++ Refresh finished
++ Starting refresh
-- Error in checkAPT.py, could not refresh the list of updates
++ Starting refresh
-- Error in checkAPT.py, could not refresh the list of updates
++ MintUpdate is in tray mode, performing auto-refresh
++ Auto-refresh timer is going to sleep for 30 minutes, 0 hours and 0 days
++ Starting refresh
-- Error in checkAPT.py, could not refresh the list of updates

Anyone have an idea what I should do next?

Thanks for offering to give your time to help.

Don Myrick

Try the simple firstIf that doesn't work, I've had to just zap the lists

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks for the suggestion- I tried to clear the list using code suggested, but received this message: rm: cannot remove ‘/var/lib/apt/lists/partial’: Is a directory

Being a Linux novice, I'm left at a loss. I guess the message indicates I lack requisite authority to take the action?

No: rm /var/lib/apt/lists/partial/*
(it may be empty, and it's ok to ignore this. Research: rmdir, but don't: leave the dir there!)

It's perfectly ok to be a 'Newbie", learning Linux/Unix! Welcome!

Does the apt clean&update work ok now? btw, do you have `inxi`?

The
sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get update

commands you suggested do appear to execute, but at the end of of the update, I get this message:

"W: Failed to fetch http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/de...stable/Release Unable to find expected entry 'main/binary-i386/Packages' in Release file (Wrong sources.list entry or malformed file)

E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead."

Thanks again for helping...

Don

Would you be able to edit a file? It looks like this problem has happened to many others:
I simply put the whole error message into a web-search, and this seems to be the answer:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/74381...ackages-chrome
(There were a lot more results, and some might have better info: I didn't research further)

I'm not sure on this, since I don't use the 'GUI' on Linux, so I've never done any of this.
I hope you have the patience to work thru glitches in getting Linux to work. Best wishes...

1)
what does "sudo apt-get update" return now? please post the output.

2)
why the f*ck does google constantly insist on wrecking working gnu/linux installations?

3)
can't you just use a browser that is native to linux?