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Unfortunately my PC's CD drive is not bootable; I have such a mixture of SATA and IDE drives, so until I have more money to redo my controller setup, I can't boot from any cd.

Currently, I have a DVD burned with latest version of Linux Mint, and I have an USB drive with an old version of Mint.

I have a partition ready to install Linx Mint into, but no idea how to install it, since I can only boot to my hard drive.

I am totally unable to boot to CD, so that is definitely out.

My main partition is WinXP Pro SP3.

Is there software I can use to format my Linux partition, so that I can then just copy Mint over to that partition? Or is there a better way to install linux mint? I have to do it within Windows XP, since that's all that I can boot right now.

I have considered Mint4Win, but that doesn't allow a full installation of Linux Mint.

Any ideas?

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  • Atm, struggling to figure out the linux mint installation wizard. Do i delete an existing partition, that was created for it, so that the install wizard can create the partitions it needs?
    – crosenblum
    Apr 1, 2012 at 19:58
  • I think so (never used Mint).
    – Renan
    Apr 1, 2012 at 20:16

2 Answers 2

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You can try UNetbootin to create a bootable USB drive from your Mint DVD.

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  • If his BIOS is(?) that cluttered, then a USB probably wouldn't work either.
    – cutrightjm
    Apr 1, 2012 at 3:28
  • @ekaj you can usually do a one time boot from a separate BIOS menu (usually F12)
    – Simon Sheehan
    Apr 1, 2012 at 3:32
  • @Simon, but this would apply to CDs as well, which makes me think that this isn't an option.. It could be, but from the way I understand the question it is not. Pressing 'F12' or whatever may be an option for the answer, since it does not really relate to the BIOS (if that makes sense)
    – cutrightjm
    Apr 1, 2012 at 3:41
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    As far as I can tell, the possibility of booting from USB is independent of the number of the hard drives. He could, also, disconnect the CD drive and then be able to boot from USB.
    – Renan
    Apr 1, 2012 at 3:48
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    i got unetbootin on my usb drive and it worked, and week's later am really enjoying linux, and linux mint. thank you all!
    – crosenblum
    Apr 22, 2012 at 8:34
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Theoretically, you should be able to install Linux Mint on another PC, copy the entire filesystem to removable media, then copy to your partition. (Binary copy as in dd - Windows version here) With Linux, the filesystem is the entire OS - no Windows registry garbage - so this should work as long as Linux Mint doesn't customize the kernel for detected hardware or something of that sort.

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  • I don't think this will work because it won't copy the bootloader. Also, the windows registry is part of the filesystem.
    – EricP
    Oct 26, 2013 at 19:11

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