Compac Presario CQ50 Install was flawless, connected wifi and cat cable, went on line allseemed to be ok then prompt at completion indicated should restart to save data. On reboot without dvd unit beeped at one second rate and did nothing. shut down install dvd restart and same beep but eventually started to boot but not off hd boot off the dvd because the wi fi did not connect when I did put the pasword and use it previously. obviously itis booting off the dvd do not know how to make id boot from the installed system. mint 17

Update Finally found a menu that allowed me to re establish the boot system. This occured as I removed the dvd while it was running in the dvd mode and selected turn off or power down. Recieved notice that the restart session may be missing some components but no problem reboot the second time and all should be ok. Followed instructions and walla it boots without the dvd three time going now and should be fine now. thanks all.

I'm happy that you fixed the problem, but I'm not sure I follow this. Precise information seems to be lacking.

For example, when you say

precisely what menu are you referrring to?

Given that you had and fixed a boot problem after install, others might find this useful if precise details of what exactly broke and how exactly it was fixed were provided.

I have found out that, in BIOS, along with the boot order... You can actually swap OUT a boot option. That means the BIOS will never attempt to boot from your hdd if it got swapped out of the boot order.

I've done it before in different ways. That latest way was turning off uefi boot, which allowed the cd/dvd to work, but would not attempt my hdd, which were uefi based (i was putzing around and didn't realize exactly what i was doing). In older BIOSes, it was a limit on boot options. From what I've seen, BIOS limit of three, while having 4 or more actual bootable devices... Where you could change the order via +\- key, or directly swap an option by hitting enter with it selected.

I am installing mint 17 on a Compac Presario CQ50. I downloaded the freeware , burned a dvd, checked the live system liked it and installed the complete system using the option to clear and use all of the hdd for linux. After installation prompted to reboot to use the system for untill then some processes may not hold data or something like that. On reboot or shutdown and restart the unit beeped at about one sec. intervals observing hdd indicator lightly blinked with the beep. continued until I could not stand it anymore. At that time the dvd was not in the drive I put the disc into the drive and rebooted and of course the live system came up which is not what I wanted so just removed the dvd and shut down. On restart hit escape to change boot sequence to boot hd continued with shutdown/restart and worked set up the wi fi and cat cable network all worked just fine. did shut down / restart at varying intervals seemed ok untill the next day when got the same old beep thus restart and "esc" for boot set up was ok but when I seleced continue startup it worked then and the rest of that day , I thought, just didnot attempt enough times. Next morning same beep and hd ind. blinking.very annoying. Then on star up went to f10 for bios set up knowing that the system was on the hdd and working I set the boot to hdd only. and restarted. wow that must have fixed it Nope. So the boot problem is still there and do not know why. For info some time ago I installed a windows vista on this hdd in this unit but was hoping that the program in the installation of mint would reformat it all---??all? I like the system when it is up and running and how it hooked up even the camera works fine. What say yalll!!!

maybe you need to reconfigure grub/lilo or whatever it is you're using as a bootloader.

Can we assume you got Mint from a proper mirror?

If you followed the directions and you used the entire disk it generally should have worked. Since the live version worked then we do have to consider some loading issue. It may be that as above a bios entry for hard drive is wrong. Bios "Hard Drive Order" should have internal hard drive listed as first before you install the OS.

Report on my questions.

Also exactly how it fails helps us. Example, boots to nothing but keyboard numlock works. Boots to grub. Shows missing operating system.

After much dadoo I think the problem was a sticking h key I notices in restoring boot that the command lines scrolling had h stringing and filling all blank spaces. as it was scrolling I tapped the h key a few time and it quit installing h and continued to finish and continued to boot all is well at least to this point.
thank all for you patience and dilligence is appreciated.

Thanks for filling in the details.

I'd have never guessed that.