Linux Mint 15 and Windows 8.1 troubles

[DrSpychology]

So I decided I wanted something other than windows 8.1 to work with, since it's been annoying me more and more. I made a boot USB drive with a 64 bit Linux Mint 15 image on it. It seems to have worked fine, when I'm in windows 8.1 it's recognized as "Install Linux Mint (F:)", I can use the windows 8.1 advanced start-up mode and it brings up a menu with 4 options, "boot into linux mint 15", "boot into linux mint 15 (compatibility mode)", "check memory" and "check boot drive" (kinda paraphrasing here), but after this, it just goes black. The USB stick doesn't show that anything is happening, the screen goes completely black and I don't know what I did wrong. Any help from you lovely people would be appreciated

 

EDIT: In the video tutorial I'm following, it states that there can't be 4 or more partitions on a hard drive. I just checked mine, and it seems to have 6 or something, but I'm not shure, and I don't know if it is the problem. I have the OS (C:), Data (D:) and then 4 recovery partitions without a letter or something. Is this the problem, and how do I solve it?

 

EDIT #2: Managed to boot into linux mint 15 and install it by disabling fast boot, secure boot control and intel anti-theft technology. However, Linux mint can't shut down properly, it gets stuck on the linux mint logo, but when I press my arrow keys, it shuts down. However, when starting up the PC, it doesn't give me the option to choose between windows 8.1 and linux mint 15. I've also enabled Launch CSM with PXE disabled, saw it was required for a linux install on my laptop, but it hasn't made a difference.Why doesn't it show the dual boot menu where I can choose between windows 8.1 and linux mint 15?

 

EDIT #3: Tried using the boot repair tool, it completely broke my PC, it would only boot from the USB stick. Luckily, that tool is just as good at un-breaking, so I rerolled the changes and I can still use windows 8.1. As a student who needs his laptop daily, the boot problems made me completely panic and I'll probably be scared away from linux forever. I don't mind all the problems with windows 8.1 all of the sudden, at least it boots...

[lutzee]

So I decided I wanted something other than windows 8.1 to work with, since it's been annoying me more and more. I made a boot USB drive with a 64 bit Linux Mint 15 image on it. It seems to have worked fine, when I'm in windows 8.1 it's recognized as "Install Linux Mint (F:)", I can use the windows 8.1 advanced start-up mode and it brings up a menu with 4 options, "boot into linux mint 15", "boot into linux mint 15 (compatibility mode)", "check memory" and "check boot drive" (kinda paraphrasing here), but after this, it just goes black. The USB stick doesn't show that anything is happening, the screen goes completely black and I don't know what I did wrong. Any help from you lovely people would be appreciated

Okay, first off does your laptop use UEFI secure boot? If so you need to make an UEFI bootable version of mint, or mint wont boot.

EDIT: In the video tutorial I'm following, it states that there can't be 4 or more partitions on a hard drive. I just checked mine, and it seems to have 6 or something, but I'm not shure, and I don't know if it is the problem. I have the OS (C:), Data (D:) and then 4 recovery partitions without a letter or something. Is this the problem, and how do I solve it?

To clarify this you can't have more than 4 'primary] partitions on a drive, but you can have more than 4 partitions when some are 'logical'

[DrSpychology]

Okay, first off does your laptop use UEFI secure boot? If so you need to make an UEFI bootable version of mint, or mint wont boot.

 

I'm guessing that it does, when I turn on my laptop, I can't access the BIOS and I have to use windows 8.1 advanced start-up to be able to select the USB drive to boot from. Also, here are my specs, they might help

 

Asus N56VB

i5-3230m

nVidia 740m 2GB 

4GB DDR3 RAM

500 GB HDD

 

I'll try to create a UEFI bootable version of Linux Mint 15, but help with this would also be appreciated

[DrSpychology]

Haven't found how to make a EUFI bootable version of linux, and I checked, when I select the USB drive from the windows 8.1 advanced start-up, it says EUFI before the name of my usb drive

[Billbob]

The 4 partition limit is a limitation of a MSDOS/mbr partition table. If you have a UEFI system you may well have a GPT partition table which supports 128 primary partitions (iirc). Given that you say you already have 6 partitions you probably have the GPT table (Unless 3 of these partitions are inside an extended partition).

 

When I have made live usbs with unetbootin I have found it copes fine with the UEFI bootloader on the usb drive, however I do not have to fight the annoyance that is secure boot.

[lutzee]

This is the problem with UEFI atm, secure boot is a promising system, but it was rolled out badly, the technology was pushed through with windows (and mac) but they didn't care about what happened with linux, its not well supported for dual boot at all. The easy way out is to disable UEFI and use legacy mode, but you'd also have to reinstall windows.  

[Billbob]

Yes, the way it was rolled out made it look more like a anti competition tool than anti malware tool. On top of that researchers have found ways to bypass it, so it is literally a waste of time that exists to make life difficult.

[DrSpychology]

I've managed to bypass it by disabling Intel Anti-Theft technology, fast boot and secure boot control, I can load Linux Mint 15 from the USB stick, and during install, everything goes fine. But when it needs to restart, it gets stuck on the linux mint logo, and after forcing a shut off, there is no menu to choose between windows 8 and linux mint, it automatically loads windows 8. The partition shows in both linux mint (when using the USB drive) and windows 8, but I can't access it in windows 8, it asks me to reformat it. What did I do wrong? 

[lutzee]

I've managed to bypass it by disabling Intel Anti-Theft technology, fast boot and secure boot control, I can load Linux Mint 15 from the USB stick, and during install, everything goes fine. But when it needs to restart, it gets stuck on the linux mint logo, and after forcing a shut off, there is no menu to choose between windows 8 and linux mint, it automatically loads windows 8. The partition shows in both linux mint (when using the USB drive) and windows 8, but I can't access it in windows 8, it asks me to reformat it. What did I do wrong? 

Windows can't read the linux file system (ext4) without special drivers, this is normal, as for getting into mint, grub probably failed to overwrite the UEFI bootloader windows uses, at this point I have no clue about how to help for the next steps, ask on the mint forums will get you a better answer.

[Canoas]

Why don't you try it on a virtual machine first? Obviously it's not optimal but at least you get to try the interface and such.

[DrSpychology]

Why don't you try it on a virtual machine first? Obviously it's not optimal but at least you get to try the interface and such.

 

Tried it off the USB drive, seems quite fun to play with, so I want to install it so I can start installing some programs

 

Windows can't read the linux file system (ext4) without special drivers, this is normal, as for getting into mint, grub probably failed to overwrite the UEFI bootloader windows uses, at this point I have no clue about how to help for the next steps, ask on the mint forums will get you a better answer.

 

Linux mint forums don't seem to be too active, so might post something there, but when it gets answered, I might have forgotten about it already