Page 1 of 1

re Mint 14 on one HDD. W7 on an SSD. Dual Boot:)

Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2013 7:55 pm
by johnwillyums
Hi. For ages now I have dual booted Windows 7 with Linux Mint, by keeping the OSs on separate hard drives. I have installed Windows 7 on one HDD ( with the other two disconnected) and Linux Mint on another hard drive, with the two Windows drives disconnected.
Then I've arranged the boot order with EBCD. I've defaulted to W7, so I'm straight into the Windows boot, but Linux Mint is there as a choice, so if I click on that I'm in GRUB.

However. I recently upgraded my machine, with a new mobo (Z77) and an SSD. I put W7 on the SSD, quite happy with that:) But when I connect the Linux HDD the system won't boot at all. It's the EFI boot I believe.
I don't want to put Linux on the SSD (it's only a 128GB one)

Is my install on the 500GB HDD now useless?
Everything I've read about dual booting with the EFI boot boards sounds far too complicated for me to do. Also, there seem to be about 5 different ways of doing it!

I'm sure there are many "casual" Linux user's like me around, now they, and most likely me, will just forget about it.
So what I really want to know from this query is- is there anyone working on a real idiot proof way of dual booting with W7 on an EFI board? Like one that can be put into wizards in the installer of the Linux distro.

I've written to your forum because I really enjoy the beautiful way you've taken Ubuntu and made it so lovely to work with, but I suppose I'm basically a consumer. Cheers, John Williams

Re: re Mint 14 on one HDD. W7 on an SSD. Dual Boot:)

Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2013 8:06 pm
by bigj231
I think you could just use grub and point it to the SSD for the windows installation. I dual booted my laptop with EFI and didn't have a problem. Granted, it was on a single drive though.

Re: re Mint 14 on one HDD. W7 on an SSD. Dual Boot:)

Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2013 8:35 pm
by johnwillyums
If I connect the Linux drive, neither will boot.

Re: re Mint 14 on one HDD. W7 on an SSD. Dual Boot:)

Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2013 9:56 pm
by bigj231
You might have to reinstall GRUB. Look at the Ubuntu Startup Repair page or just reinstall GRUB from the Live CD.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair

Re: re Mint 14 on one HDD. W7 on an SSD. Dual Boot:)

Posted: Sat Jan 26, 2013 9:02 pm
by johnwillyums
Thanks for your input bigj231, I'll give it a try, John:)