Booting Linux Mint 12

[elchucko]

When booting LM 12 a dark rectangular box is displayed at the bottom of the screen with "HP Media Drive" displayed and a choice of "open with files" and "eject". If I select eject the system hangs. This display has just started happening and I have no idea why. I also want to stop the box itself from being displayed. Suggestions?

[Roxoff]

What device is your HP Media Drive? A Google search tells me that it's some kind of hard disk - is it your boot up hard disk? If so, 'ejecting' it will cause you all kinds of problems.

With the advent of USB drives and SATA HDDs, also came the idea that HDDs could be plugged and unplugged into live systems. While this isn't normally done, most modern OS's support it. If your system is running off a USB or external SATA hard disk, it could be mistakenly identified as a removable device - which is why you might be given an eject option.

[elchucko]

The HP Personal Media Drive is plugged into a USB port inside the PC. It is inserted from the front. The disk is hot swappable. I never remove the disk from the HP. As I type the display in question has disappeared.

[Roxoff]

So it's a normal disconnectable drive - and it appears to be detected correctly and Mint is giving you the normal Gnome 3 message to allow you to open it or eject it. Ejecting is failing - but you don't want to do that anyway.

The problem, then, appears to be Gnome 3. I have this same issue in Fedora - the box pops up when you insert a removable drive (USB stick, memory card, or whatever) but there are only options to show or eject - you can't close the box or ignore the newly detected drive.

I've no idea how to modify that box. I'll take a hunt round for a solution later, unless someone comes up with details before then.

[elchucko]

You are correct.

[elchucko]

It seems this problem began after I downloaded and installed Firefox "Download Helper". Whether or not that's caused the problem. Now when I boot, even from power off the screen displays a random pattern in the upper left screen. When I enter my password I've lost 2 icons from the workbench or whatever it's called. Ideas? I guess one approach would be to start removing applications.

[Roxoff]

All I know of that message box is that there is a simple interface that lets you make them appear. It uses text, maybe xml, so the source of the information it displays could be from anywhere. I'm not sure what defines what gets displayed - perhaps there is a config xml somewhere that it's constructed from. I can't see how installing a download manager will have changed that, though.

[elchucko]

I have been attempting to download video from YouTube and burning to DVD. Several system updates have occurred recently. It seems I keep going backwards. How would I go about re-installing LM12? Do I have to remove/rebuild partitions? Can I simply reload for DVD? Darn, I don't to go back to W7!

[Roxoff]

If you reinstall your system then you can re-use your partition layout if you want. But if you reinstall, you'll just get the same updates. So unless you've made config changes that break your system, you wont move forward. It's usually better to find out what is the cause of your problem and fix it.

[elchucko]

I switched to the classic gnome and it appeared the problem disappeared but it came back.