How should I clean up my laptop?

Halvor Raknes

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I got a laptop from 2013 last year which had Windows 10 on it. I wanted to run Linux which I have had some experience with and installed Linux Mint 19.3 with a dual boot.

Now I want to get rid of Windows and perhaps combine the several partitions, the largest two being NTFS.

Since most of my data is on the NTFS partitions and I have very little free space on the root drive, I wonder if I could use GParted (or something alike) to inch the files I want to keep from the NTFS drives over to the EXT4 drive piecemeal, all the while reducing the size of the NTFS drives and enlarging the root drive.

Would this be a sustainable approach?
 


Brickwizard

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Welcome to the forums

first thing to do is sit back and have a read of this..
 
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Halvor Raknes

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It looks like the section "2. Convert NTFS to EXT4 without Losing Data with GParted" gives the recipe I was outlining above.
 
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Halvor Raknes

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OK, if that is settled, would it be ok to then simply delete the NTFS partitions still containing all of the Windows 10 system content and then removing Windows from the dual boot using e.g. Grub Customizer?
 

kc1di

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OK, if that is settled, would it be ok to then simply delete the NTFS partitions still containing all of the Windows 10 system content and then removing Windows from the dual boot using e.g. Grub Customizer?
You can use gparted to delete and reformat the partition to ext4. after you removed windows by doing that just go to a terminal and type
Sass:
sudo update-grub
and it should remove the window entries because in won't find windows. I would not use grub customizer if I did not have to it adds too much complexity to the boot loader.
 
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TheProf

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I believe you also have the option of extending your root or home partition depending on how you setup your Linux environment.

In terms of GRUB, I suggest that you update grub through the terminal as @kc1di mentioned:

Code:
sudo update-grub

Grub customizer can work, but I believe there's a higher risk of it breaking something vs you doing it in the terminal.
 

Vrai

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It looks like the section "2. Convert NTFS to EXT4 without Losing Data with GParted" gives the recipe I was outlining above.
Keep in mind that whenever moving, resizing, or deleting partitions things can sometimes get a little 'wonky' and go sideways on you.
Might want to ensure you have backup copies of any important data.
 
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Halvor Raknes

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Now my laptop won't boot!

I'm at the municipal library right now and, and the Ubuntu Internet access terminals there don't give me access to terminal and won't let me install software so that I can create a bootable USB.

What can I do?

And when I say "won't boot" it doesn't even let me enter the boot menu item for repairing dpkg packages because that screen is overlayed with a terminal prompt so that the up and down arrows variously (and unpredictably) moves to highlight the menu items or moves through the command line prompt for items like systemctl reboot or exit.
 

TheProf

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Now my laptop won't boot!

I'm at the municipal library right now and, and the Ubuntu Internet access terminals there don't give me access to terminal and won't let me install software so that I can create a bootable USB.

What can I do?

And when I say "won't boot" it doesn't even let me enter the boot menu item for repairing dpkg packages because that screen is overlayed with a terminal prompt so that the up and down arrows variously (and unpredictably) moves to highlight the menu items or moves through the command line prompt for items like systemctl reboot or exit.

What did you do to make it not boot anymore? I see that we provided you some suggestions, but without knowing what happened, its hard to help you.
 
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Since you do not want Widows anymore I would grab Linux Mint 20.2 and start over - just reinstall Linux and wipe the hard drive
 

MatsuShimizu

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Now my laptop won't boot!
You might need to start from scratch, especially when you don't need Windows anymore.
I got a laptop from 2013
What laptop model that you are using? Your RAM and CPU amounts?
There specific distros for old laptops. For example: Q4OS, Emmabuntus, Puppy Linux, AntiX.
Full list from this link:
You can read reviews from ITSFoss:
 
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Halvor Raknes

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OK, this is what happened: I was resizing the partitions, decreasing the size of the NTFS partitions and increasing the size of the EXT4 partition (SDA 8, I think). There were two NTFS partitions, both < 100GB. Since I needed free space in front of the EXT4 partition in order to enlarge it, I had shrunk SDA 6 (4 and 6 were the NTFS partitions) and created SDA 5 with EXT4 and copied the files I wish to keep (media files) from SDA 6 to SDA 5. But [U]gparted[/U] wouldn't let me delete SDA 6, some error about segment 84 being called twice or something.

This was when I attempted to reboot, and couldn't,

I have an ASUS 551M with 4GB RAM and 475GB HD. I run Linux Mint 19.3
 

Brickwizard

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you could try..
hold down shift key switch on [continuing to hold shift down]
this should bring up the grub menu
select advanced options
select repair broken package's enter and let it run [this can fix a lot of problems] when finished re-boot WARNING on this reboot your graphics and sound may go wonky, don't worry just go to menu and do another re-start, if it fixes the errors it will boot normaly
 
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Halvor Raknes

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hold down shift key switch on [continuing to hold shift down]
this should bring up the grub menu
select advanced options
select repair broken package's enter and let it run [this can fix a lot of problems] when finished re-boot WARNING on this reboot your graphics and sound may go wonky, don't worry just go to menu and do another re-start, if it fixes the errors it will boot normaly
OK, I don't get any thing different when booting holding down the shift key.

I do get the GRUB menu (I think) anyway. So now i choose "advanced options" and select recovery mode.

Now I arrive at a menu with various options, "resume", "clean" and "dpkg" being the first three. Here is where it won't work. the highlight bar doesn't move when I press the up and down arrow keys, Tab makes the highlight bar jump to "Ok*" at the bottom of the menu. However, pressing 'enter' opens a terminal prompt on the left side of the blue screen, white on black: "root@halvor-X551MA:^#".

Just to show more of the same, if I then enter "exit" a new similar looking screen opens with a text starting with "You are now about to conclude the recovery sequence and continue the startup sequence" and so on (I am translating from Norwegian). There's an "Ok" option at the bottom but when I press 'enter' what happens is that a new command line prompt, white on black, opens directly below the "Ok" button.

Pressing 'enter' now blanks the screen with only a blinking cursor in the upper left corner of the screen. After a minute or so a 5-line text appears:
You are now in recovery mode. After loggin in, type "journalctl -xb" to view system logs, "systemctl reboot" to reboot, "systemctl default" or "exit" to boot into default mode. Press Enter for maintenance (or press Control-D to continue): <blinking cursor>

None of these options get me anywhere new.
 

Brickwizard

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sorry.. but it was worth a try
 
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Halvor Raknes

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I am also trying to create a bootable usb stick, but so far I am up against the hurdle of needing sudo permission which I don't have.

Also, I would like to know what OS I should make with the usb stick. Since Mint is now at version 20.2 whereas my system is 19.3, I contemplate creating Peppermint bootable usb instead as Peppermint is less resource consuming than Mint. Or should I stick with Mint no matter until these problems are sorted?
 

Brickwizard

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I like peppermint and use to run it on one of my laptops BUT peppermint 10 should have been replaced 2 years ago [it expires 2022] and as yet there is no sign of a replacement, so I replaced it with MX [the new version of which came out about 4 weeks ago]
the easiest way to make a bootable usb is use another machine if you can borrow/use one [download your choice of distribution ,make sure its got a few years life]
If you want to make a USB persistent drive [for travel use/emergency use] the best way I have found is install in the usual way but you will need at least a 32gb pendrive , when you come to the partitioning make sure you select the pendrive and not the main drives I have an old one made this way in my box of bits, just in-case i need to do a rescue job
 

Brickwizard

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sorry got called away..
Your lappy 2013 i will assume its got a core 2 duo intell processor and at least 2mb ram, this is enough to run MX but 4mb ram [probably the most the motherboard will support] will be better, Mx will take a bit of getting use to as its Debian stable based and uses different package managers to mint/ubuntu and a very different desktop out of the box but that can be changes to whatever you prefer once installed

Bwiz
 
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Halvor Raknes

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Yes, I have Dual Core Intel Celeron N2815 and 3.72 GiB memory.

I have sent out several requests for help to format a bootable usb.

Is there something more that can be attempted with the laptop in its current state?
 

Brickwizard

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The N2815 has never been top of its class in terms of speed but it will do the job,
did you back up all your data to an external drive before you started ?
Is there something more that can be attempted with the laptop in its current state?
nothing i can think of but one of our programming guru's may have other ideas [when they are about]
 

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