Confused help, please?

[Peter2641]

Having an Advent laptop available I went ahead and tried to install Mint 18.3 with no previous knowledge or research - stupid I know.
I downloaded three versions of the Mint 18.3 installation and used Etcher to transfer the iso's to usb sticks. The best I could manage was on installation verification 1 bad file but I went ahead with the installation anyway.
I am now in the position that I have a laptop that will not connect to the internet so I cannot access any of the help screens or it so far appears to do anything useful.
I would prefer now to (a) wait for the installation DVD and usb I have ordered from OSDisc to arrive and inthe meantime to -
1) clean off the hdd so I can reinstall windows and then Mint as a dual boot - how can I do this , please? AND
2) return the 3 usb sticks I have used so that I can use them with windows (at the present windows will only some times recognise them and then with very small apparent capacities).

Finally can you reccomend some reading to me please?

Many thanks.

Peter

 

[wizardfromoz]

Hi Peter and welcome to linux.org

I may not be able to stay for long right now but I'll ask you a few questions that may help others to help you.

1. Version of Linux Mint 18.3 - do you know if it is MATE, Cinnamon or Xfce? The name of the download will tell eg linuxmint-18.3-cinnamon-64bit.iso .?

2. Did you download from the official Linux Mint website (or if not, where) and did you follow their instructions to verify the download?

3. When you boot the laptop, does it take you to a Login screen, or not that far?

4. If you are able to get into it as far as the Desktop, is it just the internet that is not working, and everything else OK, or nothing works? Are you able to attach an ethernet cable and get a connection? Tell us more about how you connect usually.

5. Can you give us some specs for the Advent laptop including the model number, so we can look it up.

There may be more questions, but if you can start with these, we can get rolling.

Cheers

Wizard

 

[atanere]

1) clean off the hdd so I can reinstall windows and then Mint as a dual boot - how can I do this , please?

Welcome Peter! I'll try just some brief answers (not my strong point). If you can boot on the Linux USB, you can run a program called Gparted to erase the hard drive. But there is no real need to do that because Windows will also let you erase the hard drive when you install it first. And if you want to dual-boot, you should install Windows first.

2) return the 3 usb sticks I have used so that I can use them with windows

I don't know how, or even if, Windows can fix the USB sticks... but Linux can. So just try to be patient until you get a solid working system going and then ask this question is a new thread. It will be a good topic in its own right, so that others might find it that way and benefit from the info on how to fix USB sticks.

Cheers

 

[Rob]

Can you try to connect to ethernet and try to run a system update? It's possible it may fix it by updating the file(s) that were installed incorrectly.