I am having no luck installing Linux Mint 18.1 on a brand new Acer Aspire E 15 E5-553G-14QY with no operating system. It has a 128GB SSD (/dev/sdb), which is what I want to install to, and a 1TB HDD (/dev/sda). The unit shipped with Windows, but I only want it to run Linux, and Windows is already gone. Both drives have been reformatted to Ext4. Bios settings are at their defaults. Mint runs beautifully from the live CD.

The graphical installer runs fine until it tries to install grub, then it fails. I get the error message "grub-install /dev/sda failed" even when I instruct it to install Mint on sdb (the SSD). When the following screen gives me the choice of choosing a different device on which to install the bootloader, to continue without a bootloader, or to cancel the installation, I select the first option and tell it to install the bootloader on sdb, but then I click "OK" and nothing happens. It also won't advance with the other two options. I cannot figure out what is wrong or how to get beyond this point.

Did you check the integrity of the .iso file before you burned it to a CD or DVD?

The .iso may be corrupt or it could be that the installer is stuck.

Since your Acer is brand new it's most likely a UEFI machine. With that you will need to boot your installation DVD/USB in UEFI/EFI-mode.

You will also need to disable the Secure Boot and the Quickboot or Fastboot in the BIOS.

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=202636

https://www.linux.com/learn/how-inst...fi-secure-boot

A secure boot issue perhaps?

http://quantumnomad.blogspot.co.nz/2...ptop-acer.html

1 members found this post helpful.

I'm 'terrified' of EFI Try a web-search of your quoted error message, and the <model> linux:
"grub-install /dev/sda failed"
Acer Aspire E 15 E5-553G intitle:linux

kawedel,

Somebody with an Acer Aspire E5-553G-15CK on:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/82532...ual-boot-fails

was referred to a solution here:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/62741...-not-dual-boot

There are over 40 steps in the solution, so do make sure that you have this written down or have access to another computer for guidance.

I realise that you have wiped Windows but you should be able to get some useful information from the above.

One of the most common stumbling blocks with Acer notebooks is the need to set a temporary Supervisor password in order to disable Secure Boot. This may be your main problem.
Don't forget to remove the Supervisor password later.

If you reformatted the whole hard drive did you create another efi partition?

1 members found this post helpful.

The error message you report looks like you are booted and installing in MBR mode and the machine is undoubtedly UEFI so you need to read your user manual to find out how to make changes in the BIOS. You also need to boot Mint UEFI and the links posted above should help with that. If you want to use GPT/UEFI, you should have either left the EFI partition or created a new one.

1 members found this post helpful.

This is what helps me to keep the UEFI stuff straight.

Things I've heard...
Disable FastBoot and SecureBoot
for [U]EFI, 64bit Image only.
gpt

Thanks, everyone, for your suggestions. You led me to the correct conclusion. After reading the links you provided, I realized this was indeed a UEFI issue. I was trying to install an MBR system onto a UEFI disk. So I switched to Legacy in the BIOS, created a new partition table and all new partitions on /dev/sdb and everything installed correctly. I see now I should have left the Windows partitions in place and simply reused its EFS, but this is OK for my purposes.

2 members found this post helpful.

All part of the learning!

You're Welcome.

Congrads!