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I’m running Win 7 and Mint 20.3 as a dual boot. Booting occurs through a Grub menu, with the default boot into Mint, and an option to boot into Win 7.

Maybe some of the following will be useful, although I don’t know what effect, if any, encryption in Win 11 might have.

When I’m booted into Mint I can access Win 7 files in at least 2 ways. One is to use the Disks app which will show all the partitions on the hard drive. I’ve got 6 partitions, the first 3 are Windows partitions and the last 3 are Mint partitions. The second Windows partition is the recovery partition, and the 3rd is the Win 7 OS partition that includes the OS as well as the typical Documents, Users, etc folders. If I select one of the Windows partitions I will be told the size, name, format type, etc. of that partition and also that it’s not mounted. I can mount it by clicking on a small black triangle at the lower left (hover the cursor over the triangle and a small dialog box appears saying ‘Mount this partition’ or words to that effect). Once mounted I will see a window with the files and folders in the partition and can then access the files in that partition.

The other way to access Win 7 files is to open the Files App which in the left hand panel will show the Recovery and OS partions under the heading “Devices”, with an option to mount similar to the black triangle method in the preceding paragraph.

So you may be able to access the Windows Recovery partition to help you get Windows back and bootable.

If you end up having to reinstall Windows you very likely will wipe out Ubuntu and need to reinstall that. The dual boot Windows/Linux combinations I’m aware of require that Windows be installed first and then Linux (at least if you boot through Grub).

Its been several years since I’ve used Ubuntu so some of the terminolgy I’ve used above for Mint might be different in Ubuntu. There may also be some differences due to my running Cinnamon and you probably running Gnome.

Hope this helps.

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mledman

Comparing the assessments of Will Fastie and Copilot. Now there’s a comparison fraught with potential issues. Perhaps Mr. Fastie and Copilot disagree in the meaning of “recent”, or perhaps in the meaning of “improvement”. Have both used Win 11 File Explorer? I’m sure Mr. Fastie has but I doubt that Copilot has (I’m trying to form a mental image of an AI model actually using Win 11 File explorer – or any other piece of software for that matter).

The fact that Mr. Fastie has used Win 11 File Explorer gives him an extreme edge in credibility.

And then there’s an issue with conflict of interest. Copilot, a product of Microsoft, plugging Win 11 File Explorer, another product of Microsoft. Couldn’t possibly be any conflict there, right?

I also wonder if anyone has checked Copilot’s assessment of Win 11 File Explorer for accuracy, i. e., checking to see whether it’s hallucinating.

I’ll take Mr. Fastie for the win.

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Lars220, Rand Alonin, Cybertooth, Will Fastie, WSrlhess, PKCano

@tex265: FWIW here’s another option to consider: paying someone to install and set up Windows 11 for you. I bought a Dell Refurbished laptop that came with Windows 10. My intent was to use it as a test machine to install Win 11 on it myself. Life got in the way and I decided to pay someone to do it. For $69 Windows 11 23H2 was installed with only a local account – just the way I wanted it. Dropped the computer off on a Friday afternoon and picked it up on Tuesday morning. It was completely ready to go, totally updated and everything. It was the best $69 I ever spent – no fuss no muss. And it had the added benefit if starting a relationship with an established PC repair professional just in case I need it in the future. I’m comfortable enough keeping Win 11 running and patched, but not feeling like I needed to learn about the 10 to 11 upgrade turned out to be a relief; I’ve got plenty of other things to occupy my time – and that I much prefer doing and that actually give me some enjoyment – than to get involved with yet another potential MS headache.

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Cybertooth

Click on Administrative Templates in the left hand panel. Then click on Windows Compnents, etc. This will finally get you to Select the Target Feature update version

I saw this news last night and have been speechless since. But…

I first landed on AskWoody in late 2016 after my Dell laptop was filling its HD at the rate of 2 to 5 GB/day. Web searches made it apparent that neither Dell nor MS was going to fix the problem even though they knew it was affecting a fair number of computers and knew how to fix it; they each blamed the other for the problem. I didn’t find anything of use on any number of other help sites/forums. I finally poked around this site and there it was: the solution that Woody himself had tested and verified. It worked like a charm.

But more importantly, the other AskWoody quality I noticed was the civility with which everyone treated each other. No cursing, no “you’re too stupid to live if you can’t figure that out” attitude, etc., just honest sincere efforts to help. All of which was surely a direct reflection of Woody’s character.

RIP

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Kirsty, Latka, Speccy, Slowpoke47, Elly, LH, jburk07, opti1, Cybertooth, maisy2, Charlie, SueW, Myst

I have always used the MS antivirus product (Security Essentials, Defender, whatever the name du jour is/was) on my Windows computers, and it has worked very well. I was the sole user of a Win 10 computer that belonged to an organiation I volunteered for that used Norton. The organization decided what security products to use. I forget the exact name of the product but it cost about $100/year. It was easy enough to use and worked well but it got to be extremely annoying because they were always trying to upsell to one of their other products. When I left the organization I recommended they save the money and just use the MS product.

So you’re saying that the OP should shut the heck up and move to either AZ or HI? By logical extension you’re also saying that anyone who doesn’t like something about any law or laws in effect in their location of residence should should shut the heck up and move to a locaton where they agree with all laws?

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Nibbled To Death By Ducks, SueW, WSbobby-p

I think it depends on what you’re going to print and how those 10-20 pages are distributed time-wise over the course of a year. If you’re going to print photos an ink-jet will generally do a better job with less fuss. I’ve never had a problem with ink jets drying up as long as I print one page a month with a combination of colors. In Linux Mint I can print a so-called test page each month that has yellow, cyan, magenta, and black (both photo black and text black). Those 32 pages (your 20 plus a monthly test page) will not use much ink; a set of cartidges for, say, $80 – $100 will probably last a few years.

Seems a bit odd. Maybe you have a usb port that’s a bit finicky. But hopefully it will boot at least one more time.

I’d be interested to know what changed or if you did something differently this time around.

Shouldn’t be any difference between LMC 20 and LMC 20.3 as far as installation goes.

I’ve never used a CDor DVD to boot, so I can’t compare times. I guess I would expect them to be about the same. Also, IIRC you are using a usb 2.0 flash drive (or perhaps usb 2.0 ports, or maybe both) which will likely be noticeably slower than any usb 3.0 devices you might have used. Not much you can do about that, though, if your computer is old. Your computer does have an SSD, so once you get LMC installed, it should be pretty fast.

I’ve always had wifi turned on during an installation even if the computer hasn’t actually been connected to the internet. Usually at some point during the installation a wifi driver will get loaded and then I’ll be informed that networks are available, which is when I’ll enter my wifi password and get connected. From my point of view being connected to the internet allows the installation to go out and look for drivers that are either missing from the FD (the FD won’t always have all the drivers for all the various combinations of hardware), or need updating.

Yes, try the “check the integrity of the medium” option. I did that a few years ago when I couldn’t boot from an FD and it told me something was wrong with the FD; made another bootable FD and all was well.

Your long skinny screen shot showing Clam AV and the Linux Mint 22 Cinnamon 64-bit is indicating that you haven’t booted from the flash drive. You’ve booted into Mint 20.3 (IIRC).

You say that you waited after turning the computer on and saw nothing happening after a while. Thinking of simplest things first, I can tell you from installing Mint on old – ca 2009 – hardware that booting from a bootable flash drive can be VERY slow. I’d give it a good 10 minutes before saying it’s not going to work. And you should time the 10 minutes with a watch because it always seems that it takes longer than it actually does. I just booted my daily driver running LMC 20.3 from a LMC 22 FD and it seemed that it took forever, even though when I looked at my watch it took about 2.5 minutes. My daily driver is ca 2016.

So my first step is to try again, choosing “Start LMC 22” and just wait and see what happens. Unless you have a faulty iso/flash drive, it should boot to a screen with “install Linux Mint” Icon on it.

If that doesn’t work then read the installation documentation in the Mint website; there’s a section in there about things to try if you can’t boot.

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Charlie

I’m not Bob99 but download it to wherever you want. When I was running W7 I typically downloaded and saved it to my desktop. After it’s downloaded double click on the downloaded file icon. The file will execute and install the new definition updates. You’ll likely see a spinning circle, but you probably won’t see any indication of when the definition update is finished. Wait until you no longer see the spinning circle for maybe 10 or so seconds. Then check MSE and see if it tells you the definitions have been updated – it should give a date and time consistent with your double click.

I’m being offered FF 136.0 this morning on my Mint 20.3 Cinnamon. I never got around to installing the ‘rebuild’ of 135.0.1. I’ll probably install 136.0 tomorrow or Friday.

In my experience it’s a lot better to trust the Mint Update Manager than to, for example, trust Windows Update. I can’t remember a time when Update Manager screwed something up, and I’ve been using it in either Mint or Ubuntu for nearly 8 years. That’s in direct contrast to my getting an error from Windows Update just last night when I was trying to install the February CU on a Win 10 machine. The error said something went wrong and we can’t install the update. WU did try again later and failed again. I don’t have time for nonsense like that.

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Mothy, Charlie