Ready to repartition, a few questions

Well, whatever you decide on, I wish you luck. I'm sorry I'm not more knowedgeable on partitioning, or maybe I could help more. One thing I would recommend though, if possible, it would be great to have an image of that drive and your Win setups. In case PC-BSD or Mint blows things away, you can still recover pretty fast. I only have one internal drive now too, but I do always keep a current image of Win on an external usb drive. That let's me install linux or anything else, and then restore back to where I was in a half hour if it doesn't work out. I'm sure you already know all that, just saying....

 

I would just install the Mint bootloader to mbr of /dev/sda and then use custom grub entries for all the others. That way you won't have a messy grub menu and you will always boot into the latest kernel. Disable osprober in the Mint grub to get rid of the clutter.

Have a look here

and ..

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=1977958&postcount=8

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=2149089&postcount=4

 

i guess you should go with installing grub thats most safe and better way because new efi creates sometimes a problem i am not sure but you can try wubi as well if it work

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/help/install-ubuntu-with-windows

or

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=106922

if i where you i install Linux mint 13 with grub 2 in MBR and run for a while then look for other options grub 2 is needed because it new you can easy update old grub pc-bsd windows everything from it but just putting grub update command but with others its not that simple

i agree with ocky go for grub 2 update because in maya new EFI booting also a big problem so it might messing as well too much editing you need to do

i myself updated to grub2 long back its works pretty easy and painless

 

just install linux mint / on sda8 and let it install with default grub2 boot loader which auto install on your sda(MBR) and it auto update everything also make sure insall it on ext4 file system rather than ext2 it install auto without problem then play with it for while when you get grip than go for harder tasks if you want to or keep it simple like us


watch this its ubuntu 11.10 and kubuntu install pretty much same on linux mint 13 it give you whole idea

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NM3d7mJUyZM

one thing you notice i let the grub default on sda(mbr) let it be so its painless

 

In post #17, noone_particular stated that

Far as I can tell this is still the primary issue. If grub or grub.cfg isn't built, editing not possible.

@Ocky,
But wouldn't disabling osprober prevent Mint from seeing other systems during installation and thus preventing triple-boot from loading?

@noone_particular,
Maybe ext2 shouldn't be used. I think ext4 is what Mint would prefer or maybe ext3 as was in the initial screens you posted.
Maybe noncontiguous main Linux and swap partitions are an issue.
Using windows disk management, can you clear current sda8 and sda7 in order to make those+unallocated into one unallocated space and then try installing Mint from a DVD (CD is too small, image won't fit) instead of USB live? (I never used USBlive, so this is pure speculation)

 

No, you can't disable osprober during installation, but afterwards, once you have made your custom entries in the 40_custom file in /etc/grub.d/
I have been doing that ever since grub2 came out because I like a neat grub menu.

 

That's what I did on the last try. Grub did not get installed. I'm going to delete sda7 and 8 on the next try, leaving one block of unallocated space. Installing from a DVD is out. I don't have a DVD burner.

Exactly. I have no idea why it doesn't get installed. This is old hardware. There's no protection for the MBR that I'm aware of.

I have no idea how to disable the osprober. Regarding the format, I've used ext2, 3, and 4 on different occasions. The results have been the same. I'll try it one more time. If Mint installs, great. If it doesn't, I'm done with it and will convert the space back into a data partition. It's not worth this aggravation.

 

If you gaven't given up yet, few suggestions, but don't forget, I'm new and just learning from your suffering.
Maybe make XP your current boot system (if Mint installation works, you will be able to change it later I believe)
Redownload the .iso or whatever installer is appropriate
and/or Recheck MD5 is good
Make your LiveUSB
But I wouldn't let it do the persistence thing, so that you can have a totally untouched installer and not propagate/repeat whatever causes of troubles are there now, if any

My laptop is Pentium4 vintage 2003, not exactly new either.

OT: Another laptop is from the late '90s. Unfortunately while Mint 9 works there, DVD drive is broken so can't install a thing. Though I might try your USB live thing, but it's USB1, dreadfully slow.