That is odd. That looks like the Lockscreen. That is not a standard Zorin Background image, though. Looks Windowsy, to me... I still wonder if the Windows Fast Boot was enabled and with Windows now corrupted and inaccessible, you cannot run Windows to go in and change that setting. (I hate Windows Lockdown Fast Boot...)
Ok... Let's try something different.
Can you boot up the USB Live Zorin - then once on the Desktop, run gparted
You can press alt+f2 to open the launcher, then enter in gparted to launch it if you cannot find it in the app menu.
Once gparted is open, you should see your hdd listed as /dev/sda(some number). As you are doing a whole disk wipe and reload, this part should be easy since you do not need to figure out which disk or which partition... Just click on the line that has the Biggest Partition.
Click the (-) minus sign Button to Delete that partition.
That should now show as "Free Space". Click that same "free space" line again and this time click the (+) add button. Now a popup window should open asking for what details to Format That partition.
Choose to format completely in ext4.
Once the drive has successfully formatted, then try installing with the Installer Icon on the desktop.
This is what my partitions look like at the moment (I haven't made the changes in your post yet). When are those partitions made in the installation process? They should've been made before files are copied, right? (Do you see anything strange on the screenshot?) I'll await your answer, then check to see if repartitioning as you explained helps.
[I know I am a complete noob, but could it be that the boot partition rather than the big one is the problem since the installation froze during the grub section of the install?]
Everything else looks good- one thing that concerns me is 23.65gigs Used on that partition- which makes me still wonder if Windows is interfering. Zorin OS freshly installed would be under 10gigs of space.
So what is using that near 24gigs?
It gives me nominal hope that wiping and reformatting the drive will work. I need to work, as well so I may not be available after this post for a few hours.
Interesting. Usually, the cause of freezing during installation is due to some kind of problem with the HDD. For example, eMMC SSD instead of HDD or standard SSD, Windows Fast Boot blocking write access, Limited disk space available or Bad Sectors on the drive.
Can you please clarify -is it saying grub-install /dev/sda or grub-install /dev/sda2?
It almost looks like the installer is trying to install Zorin on the USB stick instead of the terabyte drive.
Before I try killing and resetting all partitions, are there any ways for me to check for bad sectors on the hard drive?
My USB is 32 GB about 28GB useable, which could account for 28GB, but I can't have a 1TB partition of a 32 GB drive...
This deserves an answer, but please try setting BIOS to Legacy before trying this.
To install grub to a specific location, this is done from the terminal within the Live Zorin demo with:
sudo grub-install /dev/sda1 --force
As /dev/sda is your hdd, this is likely unnecessary- and my fault for posting while multi-tasking and distracted. My brain read /dev/sda2 and /dev/sdb instead of /dev/sda2 and /dev/sda.
Makes you want to bang your head on a table, doesn't it?
I am running on an Acer Aspire Tower. Prior to that I was using an Acer Aspire Notebook... My sons notebook is an Acer Aspire of some other model number... and all Zorin Installations went smooth as butter.
Can you please check here:
On none of my machines have I set a Supervisor PW.
My short reprieve from work is nearly ended. Very happy to see Harvey and FrenchPress are around to help, too.
The link you gave says it's not advisable to enable legacy boot mode.
I checked the installation medium for errors, but maybe the file I burned was in some way corrupted. How do I verify the original file that I burned onto it?
Would it help if I burned a USB with Rufus instead of balenaEtcher? Everything appears to work if I boot from the USB, so I assume the USB itself is good...
YES.
And I guarantee you others will voice strong approval of this message. LOL
BalenaEtcher is notorious.
Whether it will help your issue, I cannot say... This one is a bit of a stumper. But I use Unetbootin. I recommend Rufus or Unetbootin.
You can ignore that. If you are able to find out how to enable Legacy, try that.
You can verify the md5sum, but that is not the same as verifying the integrity of the write.
I came across some additional things that might prove useful.
During my latest installation attempt the installer said the HDD had Zorin installed on it and offered the option to install Zorin alongside Zorin.
Yet when I try to run the system without the USB, it says there is no bootable device. That suggests to me there is something wrong with the booting process (and the boot partition if there is such a thing).
Also, I used to have the option in the boot menu to boot from USB or from the harddrive. Somewhere along the way, I've lost the latter option and it now only allows me to boot from USB, another point towards something being wrong with the boot.
When I tried the "Something else" option in the installer and told it to write to /dev/sda1 it threw an error I can't remember. (I.e. it refused to do it).
I'll see if booting from a USB burned with a different utility makes a difference.
Otherwise, I'll try to install a different Linux distro to get the harddrive sorted and see about replacing the other one with Zorin.
