Why Do I Have Double Mints At Boot?

[jordan]

I am asked to select from two Mints: a generic as the default and under "other operating systems" there is a Mint on sda1.

When I boot the generic Mint, the screen goes black at one point during boot.
If I choose the sda1 Mint, it starts up.

Is this supposed to be this way?

[67GTA]

If you only have one Mint installed, then that is not normal. Something has gone terribly wrong. Post a copy of your /boot/grub/menu.lst, and the output of

Code: Select all

sudo fdisk -l

from a terminal so we can have a look.

[jordan]

If you only have one Mint installed, then that is not normal. Something has gone terribly wrong. Post a copy of your /boot/grub/menu.lst, and the output of

Code: Select all

sudo fdisk -l

from a terminal so we can have a look.

I began a Mandriva install that erased all partions, then shutting down the install after it formatted the partition. I did only get Mint to install on the third try after doing that. Hopefully this information is still useful you requested:

255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 2432 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0007dd08

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 2325 18675531 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 2326 2432 859477+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 2326 2432 859446 82 Linux swap / Solaris
c@vv:~$

[67GTA]

It seems like there is more going on here than I thought. Do you have Mint installed, or Mandriva? Did Mint not install correctly? It sounds like you have too many things going on now to try to fix the first problem. If you done a clean install of Mint, or any distro, you should only have two entries for that distro in your grub menu(regular boot/recovery). Any other distro that is already installed will show up in the "Other OS" part of the menu. It sounds like you tried to install Mint more than once unsuccessfully, and it tried to add one of the previous failed installs to grub. We can try to help you figure out why Mint is not installing if you want to use it. It is best to start with new formatted partitions. If you leave a failed install on a partition, it may have gotten far enough to be recognized, but not be able to boot.

[jordan]

It seems like there is more going on here than I thought. Do you have Mint installed, or Mandriva? Did Mint not install correctly? It sounds like you have too many things going on now to try to fix the first problem. If you done a clean install of Mint, or any distro, you should only have two entries for that distro in your grub menu(regular boot/recovery). Any other distro that is already installed will show up in the "Other OS" part of the menu. It sounds like you tried to install Mint more than once unsuccessfully, and it tried to add one of the previous failed installs to grub. We can try to help you figure out why Mint is not installing if you want to use it. It is best to start with new formatted partitions. If you leave a failed install on a partition, it may have gotten far enough to be recognized, but not be able to boot.

You are right, there was actually too many things to explain that happened before this. I just started all over.

[67GTA]

Did you get it going this time?

[rivenought]

You know, sometimes it takes a completely clean re-install to fix a myriad of problems. I have done that quite a few times myself. It is all part of the learning process. Please post back and share with us if that rectified your situation.

[jordan]

You know, sometimes it takes a completely clean re-install to fix a myriad of problems. I have done that quite a few times myself. It is all part of the learning process. Please post back and share with us if that rectified your situation.

I think I unintentionally created another partition and install Mint on it, instead of reinstalling it on the partition I intended for it to go on. I started all over. I am having problems shutting down. But I started that issue in another thread.