Linux Won't Load
 

Hey everyone,

Linux Mint 11 Katya (with gnome) will no longer load. It worked after I installed it. I played with some settings(changed a few start-up programs, appearance, etc) and I used the software manager to download some stuff (OpenOffice, Audacity, something I can't recall and an Alien game). Updated some drivers, restarted and all of a sudden it won't work. It says that the Power Options weren't correctly installed or something like that and then prompts my admin sign-in. Sign-in and then it just pops up with the same window. Never loads.

What I think may have caused it:
I think I screwed something up in the partitions. For some reason the Game that I downloaded went into my "/" partition and filled it up (5gb) as opposed to my "/home" partition (100gb) I manually dragged the folder over to home but the disk still said "/" was full.

Any solutions?

The bootloader and GRUB work fine.
It loads in recovery mode just fine (I don't have enough experience with the terminal to use it though).

Doesn't sound like you have any mission critical stuff on there, just do a reinstall. It won't take long, probably quicker than trying to diagnose and fix whatever you did.

That's actually what I was hoping you'd say! The easy fix to everything!
So what is the easiest way to wipe linux? Use windows disk drive manager and delete the partitions entirely? Or is there some code I run through the recovery mode terminal? And do I need to worry about getting GRUB off of it as well or will that be fine to leave for when I reinstall it?

The best way is to boot off the Mint cd, load the desktop and do it from there. When the partition option comes up, choose use existing everything will be overwritten and you should have a brand new shiny install when done.

The Mint install disk will do that for you.

If want to reinstall Mint, you can direct the Mint installation program to replace the existing Linux system (that's the usual wording, though it may be slightly different from distro to distro).

It should then reformat the partition and install Linux on it.

If attempt to use Windows disk manager, Windows might see the Linux partition as unformatted space, as Windows is not friendly to must Linux/Unix file systems.

Awesome! Thank you very much everyone and I'll let you know how it goes!