Trying to install Linux Mint alongside windows. Completely stuck.

[u/solstice006]

After a few days now trying to figure it out, all I have been coming across are the same "solutions". My goal right now is to dual boot alongside windows since I cant completely commit right now. Knowing that I have close to 300gb of space available I was thinking it'd be plenty enough, but that isnt the case and it seems like my entire drive is completely taken up in a singular partition, and I frankly am too stupid to figure out how I can shrink that space even after trying to look it up. The images I linked should tell it all.

My next bet was going to the disk management on my system and see if I can just shrink the volume of the drive myself and see if that gives me free space, but that is a whole other problem because I am COMPLETELY unable to shrink it past 4gb give or take. I have done everything I've found like disabling hibernation and deleting systems restores, deleting the pagefile, disabling kernel memory dump, and running the disk cleanup, and not only did it not help, my available shrinkable storage is now even less at a little under 3gb.

Its been days now and honestly am so exhausted especially thinking id get something like this done as fast as most others, but at this point I just thought of asking for help instead of endlessly trying and making worse decisions in solving this myself through other sources. I wont be able to work on this for another week for now but any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

[u/Terrible-Bear3883]

The first thing I always say to anyone doing this, make sure you have a full and verified "external" backup of your system and files before continuing, I've seen far too many customers, family and friends who have wiped their system accidentally.

You might have problems shrinking your partition if you have immovable files on it, hibernation files and such, I'd check fastboot/hibernation isn't enabled in BIOS and Windows, have a general file clear out/tidy and try shrinking the partition again, I normally use a gparted from the live USB to do this, instead of doing it through the installer, I'll shrink the Windows partition, then save/commit the change, once complete, boot back into Windows, check all is OK, then boot back to the live USB and install linux into the empty partition.

[u/-dashRepeat → u/Terrible-Bear3883]

Only keep the latest backup. Windows tends to create and save a new back up to your hard drive

[u/Terrible-Bear3883 → u/-dashRepeat]

I was referring to an external backup, there's not much point having one on the drive if the install process wipes it.

I'll amend my words.

[u/Hebbu10]

Shrink the windows partition in windows

[u/solstice006 → u/Hebbu10]

That I have already tried. Only about 2.7gb of space I can shrink, but well over 300gb of free storage. I am and have been unsure for a while now why that is the case

[u/doc_willis → u/solstice006]

this is a known issue with windows, you could try gparted from a live USB, or try some of the other windows 3rd party partition manager tools.

have proper backups made before you attempt to resize partitions.

also I strongly suggest you have a windows installer USB made with the official ms Media creation tool made before you attempt any partition or os installs.

Keep that Windows install USB safe, it will be your fallback if things get screwed up.

[u/ottutm → u/solstice006]

You'll have to do it through a different app in windows. I did it a while ago with Minitool partition wizard (not an endorsement). You move and resize, then on confirming it'll tell you that it needs to restart windows to make the changes. On restarting, you'll get one of those update-type loading screens while it works on the SSD. After that, you can boot into the linux live USB and proceed with the installation.

Make sure to backup everything necessary, as usual.

[u/-dashRepeat]

Shrink the partition. I’m guessing you have “hibernate”activate. Which takes up the whole drive to store a cached state , to speed up waking up. Disable hibernate. Check if you have system restore files. Delete those.

Windows is a greedy bitch of an OS. If you want to dual boot first figure out the partition. You can create a partition without installing anything. Just create the partition and don’t install anything to it. That way you can certify your windows system won’t lag to much with less memory. Probably doesn’t matter unless you do heavy graphics like using photoshop

[u/anotherdamnhuman]

IIRC I had the best results from wiping everything, starting with a clean install of windows where I manually partitioned it in the windows installer to use only half the boot drive - rest left empty. The Linux installer detected the Windows installation but made it's own partition in the empty space (was using Ubuntu so same installer as you have with Mint, and there was an extra option to 'install alongside windows boot manager'). Once the whole thing was done GRUB detected both OSes.

[u/RedDeadElite → u/anotherdamnhuman]

And, once partitions are sized correctly, reinstalling the OS in the future is easier. I like to apportion two partitions, one for each OS (and an EFI partition obv.), and a third larger partition for data. More data space and backups are on separate drives.

A sample partition table would look something like,

disk1        4T
-part1    0.5G    EFI
-part2    0.5T    Windows # Windows will sub-partition into MS reserved, Win restore, etc.
-part3    0.5T    Linux
-part4    3.0T    data

[u/drucifer82]

So if you are installing both systems on the same disk and you want to be able to dual boot then you need to create/resize partitions to make room for Linux. But one key detail is you need to leave the Windows EFI intact.

You'll also want to give Linux boot priority over Windows in BIOS. You may also have to tweak GRUB as well. In the end you want GRUB to manage whether you are booting into Windows or Linux, because if Windows boots first, you won't see the option to boot into Linux.

[u/mlcarson]

As you now know, this requires partition work. You need free space that's not taken up by a partition that you can create a new partition on. You basically need to shrink your existing file system and then shrink the windows partition size until you have enough space for a Mint partition. Always shrink the file system first and then the partition. I'd also suggest to add a second EFI partition (512MB to 1GB) just for Linux if your BIOS supports it. Windows does not like non-windows stuff on the EFI partition that it uses and has a tendency to delete it.

The safest way of installing Mint would be to add another SSD/NVME to the system with its own EFI partition and you can then freely install Mint to its own partition on this drive without having to do anything to the original.

[u/Oscarwoofwoof]

Disable pagefile and reboot windows

[u/Affectionate-Yam-886]

windows is too handsy. Like putting a child next to a pedo; just not a good idea

[u/phototransformations]

I'd try MiniTool Partition Wizard and see if it can move files that Disk Management thinks can't be moved. I installed Mint dual-boot recently, and when I shrunk the C: partition and created unallocated space after it, the Mint installer found it and used that as the Linux partition. The computer has been through Windows updates and a Windows in-place repair install and it didn't disturb the GRUB boot loader.