Hi
I am having trouble installing linux mint 17 for the first time on a windows xp system and need help as when I boot from the DVD iso file (I used the isofileburner as instructed) I get the first screen of linux mint automatic boot in 10 seconds when the timer goes down, the screen changes and has a small rectangular box with different coloured squares and does not open up with the "Start Linux Mint" screen.

Any idea what is wrong? I have tried downloading the linux mint 17 mate a couple of times and have burned the iso file to dvd using the isofileburner but keep getting the same thing. It starts off OK but does not go to the next screen. I have ordered a copy of the Linux Mint 17 MATE - Install/Live DVD (64-bit) and will try that and see what happens.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Mark454

I just installed Mint 17 on a computer and it went smoothly. It does take a while for the computer to boot from the optical disk as it must load everything into RAM, but it sounds as if you allowed plenty of time.

Did you download the *.iso from the Mint website and check the MD5 sum before you burned the disk?

If you have another computer, you might try booting the disk in it to see whether it boots properly there.

Hi Frankbell
I did download the file from the mint website but did not check the MD5 sum as I did not know that you had to, could you tell me how to go about that or is it on a website?
I have a windows 7 OS on my other computer, would I be able to try out the download on that or would it make mess up the windows 7?
I suppose as long as it boots and opens up I can just open the drive up and remove the DVD and shut down the PC, would that work OK?

At the Mint download page below you will see 'Download Links' near the bottom of the page. Just below, you will see Cinnamon and Mate and to the right, 32-bit and 64-bit. Click on the appropriate one you downloaded and a new page will show the md5checksum. You would go to the directory in which the iso resides and type md5sum followed by the exact name of the iso file as shown in the example below. This is on Linux.

The link below explains how to do this on xp. You might have to download the software, I've never used xp so don't have any idea.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/...sum_in_Windows

Make sure the computer you plan to use is 64-bit. Something old enough to be using xp, ??

Hi Mark,

1) On an XP system which may be older than your Win 7 system, you might be better off with the 32 bit version.
a) It appears that you downloaded the 64 bit version.
b) Note the comment by Yancek, regarding the version of the Linux distribution.

2)It would be wise to run the OS from the DVD drive first. Thus you should leave the disc in the drive, since I assume you want to try running the live OS version at first to make sure it will boot before attempting to install it.

As Andy said, make sure you actually have a 64-bit computer!

To be sure that your disk is OK, burn at the slowest possible speed. You don't need to verify the checksum before burning, because when you run the installation disk it will check itself. When it shows the message about booting automatically, press ENTER for the menu and choose the option to check the disk. That will calculate a checksum for every file on the disk and tell you if there are any problems.

The disk will run as a live session without doing anything to your hard drive, so it's perfectly safe.

I did make the wrong copy of the 64 bit PC and have now downloaded the 32 bit one and still have the same trouble, I did try the new ISO copy to my other computer and it did open and and I could have installed it. When trying to install it on the windows XP the automatic boot for 10 seconds comes up and after that I get a screen of very colourful letters that don't mean anything that reduces in size and does nothing? I was wondering if I did reformat both the hard drives and then put in the DVD, would it install then? Or would I have to install Ubuntu as my OS?
Could the optical CD/DVD drive be kaput?

Tell us more about the specs of the XP computer, in particular, what video card is in it.

Also, if you can, test booting the disc in another computer.

here are my specs:
Mothereboard is Asus A8N-E
video card is Asus 7800 GTX 256MB PCIe
Ram is OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) DDR400 CL2 plus 2 x 512MB DDR400
2.6Ghz AMD athlon 64 FX
XP home edition
I did try out the new copy of the 32 bit linux installation and it does work on my other PC (windows 7) also the optical drive works as well as I tried out opening different CD's DVD's movies games files etc.

Well just some guides that might help.

http://itsfoss.com/guide-install-lin...-boot-windows/

http://itsfoss.com/things-to-do-afte...linux-mint-17/

I am wondering if the newer kernel is messing with the nouveau driver that Mint is trying to boot on your system via a live session probably. I kinda ran into that on a Ubuntu 14.04LTS minimal install.

I had to boot into vesa mode/driver via live session to get to a screen OK> http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=130517

Ok here is what I have done so far, could not get the mint package to install, so tried the unbuntu 32 bit instalation and that did work, only trouble was I had to turn it off as it was late at night, and I did try it installing it the next day, only trouble was in the process of installing it the second time and trying to get rid of windows I have windows still on it and I would like to get rid of it and just have ubuntu which I still have to boot off the CD/DVD drive to open it. When I try start the PC I get the the boot up part and nothing else. It seems I may have stuffed things up. Anyway I was wondering can I do a full install only of ubuntu, reformat the whole PC and do away with windows? And if so how would I go about it? at the moment I have both ubuntu and windows, could I reformat the PC and then install the DVD of ubuntu on it or what? I might have to ask a friend to help sort out this mess I have done.

You should get several options when you boot the Ubuntu installation medium including 'Erase and use entire disk'. That would overwrite everything and install Ubuntu.

Ive got the same hangup at the collection of multi colored blocks during boot from latest mint 17. Various Ubuntu derivatives also have this pattern but don't get stuck on it. Solydk (mint) also has issues here. It is an 2008 dell dimension 690 with he force 400. I have an older mind DVD that acts the same. I'm surprised they haven't resolved this.

Hey,

I got the same problem on a Windows XP Laptop with Pentium M Processor.
The solution of this problem is absolutely easy, if you know what to do


Simply press any key during the 10 seconds countdown screen.
This will show a small menu. Choose "Start in compatibility mode" and the system should boot properly.

If your computer has an older CPU which does not support PAE, choose "Start Linux Mint with PAE forced".