Failing to install Mint 18.2

[Skybird]

A German made me testing booting with Live media for Mint 18.0 and KDE neo, I think he wanted to see whether it is about differences in the Kernels. Both attempts failed, freezed in the middle of nowhere. He said it could be just before the GUI gets loaded, how he comes to that theory I don'T know, the screen does not show whether or not the GUI was about to load or not, it all just freezes. mI just mention it as an additional observations. I have a relatvely new ans strong notebook - but can only load/install a Mint of the past...? It has still support until April 2019, okay, but still... I asked in the biggest German forum for this OS. Nobody has a clue. And I started to feel seriously pissed. Not becasue of the people, but the totally locked situation, no step forward or backwards.

[propbeanie]

When you load the 17.2, can you "see" the 18.2 hard drive in the same machine OK? Can you navigate through the folders?

[Skybird]

Yes, I even saved some photo files of recent date that so far had not been included in regular backups.

[Skybird]

Live Ubuntu 16.04.3 medium also freezes during installation attempt. Just tried.

Live Mint 17.2 still works.

Mail from the shop, they are clueless.

Throwing the whole thing out of the window sounds like a reasonable alternative now.

I quit in the German Mint forum, they have started to become angry that I throw a shadow in sunny Linux land. Will try an international forum, but with no real hope left anymore.

So langsam geht mir die ganze Computerei einfach nur noch auf die Nerven.

[ExFishermanBob]

Can I understand more clearly:

You create a bootable USB stick, boot to 18.2, but there is a failure during 18.2 installation.

I have had a similar problem, when I downloaded the installation ISO, but the download was corrupted (damaged). It appeared to install correctly, but booting produced an 'insert bootable disc' error message.

Re-downloading the ISO and verifying the checksum allowed me to proceed and install successfully (on 4 machines and a virtual box image so far), including on machines that previously ran 17.3 or 18.1.

Note: the above were Cinnamon installs, not KDE, but that should not matter.

https://linuxmint.com/verify.php

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by ExFishermanBob

Can I understand more clearly:

You create a bootable USB stick, boot to 18.2, but there is a failure during 18.2 installation.

I have had a similar problem, when I downloaded the installation ISO, but the download was corrupted (damaged). It appeared to install correctly, but booting produced an 'insert bootable disc' error message.

Re-downloading the ISO and verifying the checksum allowed me to proceed and install successfully (on 4 machines and a virtual box image so far), including on machines that previously ran 17.3 or 18.1.

Note: the above were Cinnamon installs, not KDE, but that should not matter.

https://linuxmint.com/verify.php

The boot media described that fail on the notebook, all work on my tower PC flawlessly.

I now have tested:

- with Mint 18.2 (stick and DVD) ,

- and only DVD: 18.1, 18.0, Ubuntu 16.04.3, KDE neon 5.10.4 (I think this version it was). They all fail. However, on the tower system they work. Flaw is with the notebook. Only tested by DVD, because I ran out of sticks meanwhile. One even ended up by getting drowned in boiling tea water I threw it into in frustration.

I tested with Mint 17.2,. both stick and DVD: works both on notebook and tower PC.

I want Mint Cinnamon 18.2, that also is what is installed on the notebook.

Super-Grub option to check for existing OS, finds Miunt 18.2, can only be the one on the notebook SSD. Choosing thios option leads to some activity, racing command lines, and then a demand to enter a root password that I never met before, never have defined, never have set up. Entering nothing, space, "linux"/"linux" or my Mint account name and password, do not work.

How it came to this?
On the notebook I wanted to create a bootable Mint Live 18.2 as backup. Something, cannot say what, a tehcnical mishap, went wrong, ended up with the stick non-formattable (since it was turned bootable), but the ISO file was not correctly written on it apparently (I later find on testing), sinc eI could not proceed with it from here on (making it unbootable and formattable under linux was beyond my knowledge and by Google search results apparently was more difficult to do under Linux than under windows), I started my Windows 7 tower PC (dual boot) to do that there, I know how to do it under Windows. The Mint Notebook was shut down regularly.

When later wanting to reboot the notebook, it failed, as described.

The Mint 17.2 stick and DVD that I used for testing, are old copies that I created over a year ago and had stored away. All other media are newly made in the past two days, via W7 on tower PC.

P.S. Can a live system be started in safe mode, and then trying some options for Kernels, graphics drivers, or somethign like that? If so, I would need help there, too, its beyond my knowledge, but somebody mentioned these things.

Are there any mandatory settings for the UEFI? I just have manually switched off fast boot, safe boot, legacy boot (CSM) enabled , just to be sure. Should not be necessary from Mint 18 on, but as I said: just to be sure.

[Skybird]

From worse to worst:

in a bid to be sure about the BIOS, I mean UEFI, and the settings, I did what i have done in BIOS on my PCs of the past 20 years occasionally to start from scratch: I send the settings all to factory default.

On PC/BIOS, this did just this.

On this damn UEFI thing, it has cleaned all harddrive devices form the booting list except one (before, it listed 4), and now boots right into UEFI every time I switch on the device. I can save and exit, and then it boots - into UEFI.

I have no clue how to add back the existing drives into the list. I never had this mess in BIOS.

In the Boot menu, I have these menu items:

Boot Conmfiguration:
Fast Boot - Enabled
Launch CSM - Disabled

Boot Option Priorities
Boot Option#1 : ubuntu (P0: Micron_M600_MTFDDAV256MBF

> Add New Boot Option
> Delete Boot Option


Add New Boot Option gives me this:

Add Boot Option (no entry there)
Path For Boot Option (PCI(17/0)\DevicePath(Type 3, SubType 12)HD(Part1),Sig8801e355-67b7-45c7-8021-d6c37fa1893c)
Boot Option File Path (greyed out)
Create (Please set Boot Option Name and File Path)

And now? Where is all the hardware gone? One SSD, one HD, one disk drive?

Things were much easier under BIOS, such a mess I never have had there.

Same with Windows 98, XP, 7.

This thing was expensive. I am completely frustrated and clueless now, and now I cannot even get a Live Medium to load - entering a medium and booting the machine, boots into the UEFI.

Why could Microsoft not just have done a solid successor to Windows 7.

Scheiße.