Problems with dual XP/Mint dual boot
Posted: Fri Mar 08, 2013 2:46 am
Hi all. I've been hitting my head on this for the past 2 days before posting, so I'm hoping you can help me out. I'm attempting to dual boot Mint 14.1 with an existing (relatively new) installation of XP. I'm getting stuck after the reboot during the installation of Mint.
My partitions are:
/dev/sdc1 (Windows XP - boots fine; the drive is acutally "J:" and not "C:", however.)
/dev/sdc2 (extended)
- /dev/sdc5 (ext4 - this is where I installed Mint)
- /dev/sdc6 (linux-swap)
I've tried a few things, including:
1) Updating the boot.ini in Windows after the running the below, per this thread: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 48#p653348
Then I copy the file to the root of J: and append this to boot.ini:
When I do this, choosing "Mint" at the bootloader just re-displays the boot options. Mint doesn't load.
2) Using Gparted (via a live session) to set the flag on /dev/sdc5 to "boot". This gives a message to insert valid media; doesn't recognize that the drive is bootable.
3) As a long shot, used Gparted to set the flag on /dev/sdc2 to "boot". This just results in a blinking cursor that stays on the screen forever.
4) Complete reinstall of Mint to the same partition. I get stuck in the same place.
I'm pretty much a newbie, though I've used Ubuntu for awhile and struggled through stuff like this. Was hoping this would be more seamless, but at any rate... I've exhausted what I can figure out on my own and would appreciate any guidance you can give. I hope I'm missing something basic. (Maybe the partition isn't mounted properly? I don't know.) Thanks in advance!
My partitions are:
/dev/sdc1 (Windows XP - boots fine; the drive is acutally "J:" and not "C:", however.)
/dev/sdc2 (extended)
- /dev/sdc5 (ext4 - this is where I installed Mint)
- /dev/sdc6 (linux-swap)
I've tried a few things, including:
1) Updating the boot.ini in Windows after the running the below, per this thread: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 48#p653348
Code: Select all
sudo dd if=/dev/sdc5 bs=512 count=1 > mintMBR.bin
Code: Select all
J:\mintMBR.bin="Mint"
2) Using Gparted (via a live session) to set the flag on /dev/sdc5 to "boot". This gives a message to insert valid media; doesn't recognize that the drive is bootable.
3) As a long shot, used Gparted to set the flag on /dev/sdc2 to "boot". This just results in a blinking cursor that stays on the screen forever.
4) Complete reinstall of Mint to the same partition. I get stuck in the same place.
I'm pretty much a newbie, though I've used Ubuntu for awhile and struggled through stuff like this. Was hoping this would be more seamless, but at any rate... I've exhausted what I can figure out on my own and would appreciate any guidance you can give. I hope I'm missing something basic. (Maybe the partition isn't mounted properly? I don't know.) Thanks in advance!