Grub failed to install fatal error

[slenkar]

I have a 12gig partition called sda6 which I installed linux mint to from a CD
I installed it on the mount point / (ext2 file system)
I also have a 1gig swap space which it recognized

after a lengthy install process it said failed to install grub and now wont show up on the grub menu on boot

I told linux mint to install grub to dev/sda which I think is the MBR where my grub is currently installed to.

[karlchen]

Hello, slenkar.

I should be /dev/sda, note the initial slash, not dev/sda. The missing slash may make the difference between failed and successful installation of Grub.
You installed Mint to /dev/sda6. Which OSes can be found on /dev/sda1 to /dev/sda5?
If there is another Linux flavour on the disk, launching that Linux and running

Code: Select all

sudo update-grub

may make your latest Mint installation appear mysteriously in the boot menu.

Kind regards,
Karl

[slenkar]

sda1 is windows recovery
sda2 is windowsxp
sda3 contains the other partitions:
sda4 boot? (left over from an install of arch linux) very small
sda5?
sda6 12 gig partition (which used to contain linux but I wiped and replaced it with Mint)
sda7 swap

the /sda/dev place was generated by mint so thats not the problem


I dont have any other linuxes installed so thats a no go, although I do have access to sda6 in windows

[karlchen]

Though the trouble does not seem to have been caused by Windows, this instruction seems to offer the right approach nonetheless: RecoveringUbuntuAfterInstallingWindows

[slenkar]

ok I ran it from terminal and it said
grub-probe: error: cannot find a device for /boot (is /dev mounted?).
Probing devices to guess BIOS drives. This may take a long time.
Could not find device for /boot: Not found or not a block device.

[slenkar]

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-restor ... ndows.html

this one worked

[karlchen]

Hello, slenkar.

Great to learn you have solved your problem. - And yes, there are quite a few instructions out there and not every instruction will cover any specific situation. Thanks for pointing us to the one that helped you.

Have a nice weekend,
Karl