Thinkpads Forum

After exploring and using my new ,TP Edge for six weeks, I dual boot installed LinuxMint 9 32-bit -Gnome. There were 400 updates. I let them install. I have had LM 9 choke on other PCs after I ran updates which was fixed by running Beachbit.

I wished now I would have just used LM 9 for a while before I installed updates & then used it awhile before I ran Beachbit so I would have some idea which action caused the strange problems. I think I got carried away with how many Beachbit actions I allowed.

I fixed some of the worst problems by complete uninstall and reinstall of Chromium & Firefox which were severely affected. Now I have problems (more with Chromium than with Firefox) writing posts. Letters will suddenly jump into another line, sometimes even entire words or parts of sentences and less often my cursor will freeze for a minute. I figure my best bet is to simply reinstall LinuxMie . I knew how to do this with the older version of Gparted but the newer fancier GUI version throws me off. I do have the newest Partition Magic CD. Actions appear clearer with it but I am a newbie to Partition Magic setup.

The point. How do I simply reformat only the Linux partitions so I can clean reinstall LinuxMint? I do not want to seriously risk trashing the Windows 7 partition as I suspect its a pain with the "new" goofy Microsoft forced method for reinstalling Windows (without a set of reinstall discs)

--Bruised

I believe the Linux Mint Live CD has gparted on it, and if it doesn't you can make your own gparted CD. With it you can format any partition to whatever you want.

Harryc wrote:I believe the Linux Mint Live CD has gparted on it, and if it doesn't you can make your own gparted CD. With it you can format any partition to whatever you want.

Thank you for the reply. I know. My problem is the last time I used Gparted you simply used your mouse to move a slider across the area you wished to work on. The new gui system puzzles me. It seems most user friendly for letting Gparted set up your drive for dual boot. When you try to do a reinstall, gparted wants
to add it, rather than ask if you wish to install over the existing install. doing anything else is very unclear. I also have the Partition Magic system with gparted. It's clearer but still unclear as to what you do to simply reformat and reinstall.

Hi,

Does Mint not use the Ubuntu installer? There is a step for that wherein you select your partitions. There is an option to format any partition.

Otherwise I don't know about Mint.

I would recommend you burn a SystemRescue CD, and learn about partitioning & formatting volumes at the command prompt. 'man mkfs' should be adequate, along with some reading and maybe some questions.

Cheers,
Bret

BruisedQuasar wrote:There were 400 updates. I let them install. I have had LM 9 choke on other PCs after I ran updates which was fixed by running Beachbit.

Uh... do you mean BleachBit? And if so... well... why?

I've tested Mint 9 on a couple different machines, and I've never seen the updates cause any issues, certainly not like the ones you mentioned.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by "choke"?

ThinkRob wrote:

I've tested Mint 9 on a couple different machines, and I've never seen the updates cause any issues, certainly not like the ones you mentioned.

+ 1, and I'm nowhere near as proficient in Linux as you are...

bwaldow wrote:Hi,

I don't know about Mint.
I would recommend you burn a SystemRescue CD, and learn about partitioning & formatting volumes at the command prompt. Bret

Thank you for the 'Rescue CD' sugestion. I downloaded the new Parted Magic 4.11...It made sense to me. I reinstalled LM9 and its working fine.
Something in the updates I installed made LM9 buggy. I do not get the popup report of a crash, asking me if I want to submit a bug report
anymore.

I used the same iso CD, so it was one or more of the updates. I found other users at LinuxQuestions discussing its best to stick
with level 1 & 2 updates in the LM9 update system.

--Bruised