Hello, im trying to install mint to try getting away from Microsoft, but im running into issues installing, and all my troubleshooting is making me even more confused (I am not very techy)

I have windows installed on my nvme drive, and a 30gb section partitioned off for mint. I also have an empty ssd for more storage (/home). When I go through the installation process, it doesn’t recognize another operating system on the computer, and when I try “something else” to install it, I get an error saying “no EFI system partition was found”.

I know I can partition off a small section for the EFI partition, but I am trying to dual boot and I assume this is not the right way to do it, especially considering it doesn’t recognize that windows is on the system. I’m also very hesitant to just send it, as I don’t want to lose any of my stuff (the most important stuff is backed up)

Edit: I’m trying to install mint 22.1, but almost all of the resources online are talking about 21

Edit 2: I have learned my BIOS mode is legacy, not UEIF (i assumed it was since my bios screen says UEIF when booting)

Edit 3: got it working!

  • milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee
    3·
    20 hours ago

    Edit: I just realised your Edit was saying you’ve got legacy bios! So this is all irrelevant. I’ll leave it up in case it helps someone else.

    Could it be selecting the wrong SSD to put the boot loader on?

    When I reinstalled mint the other day on my laptop with an nvme and SSD (also dual boot) it labelled the extra SSD as sda and the original nvme as sdb, so it was going to try to put the bootloader on sda.

    I set up the partitions on the third option (1. Install alongside windows; 2. Wipe everything; 3. Set it up manually) and on the manual setup there’s a selector for the bootloader device just underneath the main section where you select partitions to use for /, /home, etc.

    IIRC you set the bootloader to the full device (in my case sdb) not the EFI partition (sdb1) and it works out out.

  • nanook@friendica.eskimo.com
    2·
    19 hours ago

    Best bet when installing a second OS is to MANUALLY partition, select the existing fat-32 efi partition for efi, write the boot block to the drive you’re going to boot off of, and choose free space for the remaining required partitions.