Grub2 with Mint 13 and Windows 8
Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2012 1:48 pm
I'm having problems getting Grub2 and Windows 8 to work together. I use Linux Mint 13 Cinnamon and am using Grub2 to dual-boot. Before moving to Windows 8, I had Mint 13 & Vista working well together. My normal workflow is that system goes into the Grub2 menu and I can choose to boot Mint 13 or Vista. However, with Windows 8 things are different. I can only get either A) Windows 8 to launch (but Grub2 doesn't launch) and it goes straight to Windows without giving me the option to go to Linux or B) Grub2 launches and shows Windows 8 (but when I choose Windows 8 I get the windows logo for 1.5 seconds, then it restarts my computer). What I actually want is the Grub2 menu (in B) but for the Windows 8 option to work properly.
When Windows 8 doesn't launch, the only way I can fix it is to put Windows 8 in repair mode and use its command line to fix the MBR such as (/fixmbr /fixboot). That gets Windows 8 happy again, but it stops Grub2 from loading. To get GRUB2 back, I boot into Linux Mint 13 Installation DVD and run grub-install / grub-update commands. It detects the OS's ok. Grub-2 then comes up and lists both Mint and Windows 8, but Windows 8 reboots when it's selected. Can somebody please help me end this cycle and get the two OS's working together?
Some details about my scenario:
- My computer does not support UEFI
- Linux Mint is on a separate disk. The disk it's on is a 3TB disk (GUID/GPT) separated in partitions of this order:
Grub-Boot flag partition (for GPT compat) -> Linux SWAP partition -> Linux EXT4 (main linux partition) -> NTFS partition (for Data only - no OS)
- Windows 8 is on a different disk. This is a 200GB disk (no GPT setup). The only partition on this is the Windows 8 partition and it's set with the BOOT flag (there's a 2Mb of free space at the end).
- The BIOS boot order is to load the 'Linux Mint' disk first
- I've tried GRUB versions 1.97 and 1.99
- Both OS's are 64-bit
Many thanks
When Windows 8 doesn't launch, the only way I can fix it is to put Windows 8 in repair mode and use its command line to fix the MBR such as (/fixmbr /fixboot). That gets Windows 8 happy again, but it stops Grub2 from loading. To get GRUB2 back, I boot into Linux Mint 13 Installation DVD and run grub-install / grub-update commands. It detects the OS's ok. Grub-2 then comes up and lists both Mint and Windows 8, but Windows 8 reboots when it's selected. Can somebody please help me end this cycle and get the two OS's working together?
Some details about my scenario:
- My computer does not support UEFI
- Linux Mint is on a separate disk. The disk it's on is a 3TB disk (GUID/GPT) separated in partitions of this order:
Grub-Boot flag partition (for GPT compat) -> Linux SWAP partition -> Linux EXT4 (main linux partition) -> NTFS partition (for Data only - no OS)
- Windows 8 is on a different disk. This is a 200GB disk (no GPT setup). The only partition on this is the Windows 8 partition and it's set with the BOOT flag (there's a 2Mb of free space at the end).
- The BIOS boot order is to load the 'Linux Mint' disk first
- I've tried GRUB versions 1.97 and 1.99
- Both OS's are 64-bit
Many thanks