Bootloader misplaced

[Farstanley]

Hi y'all I have a bit of a problem here

Today I installed mint 11 on my laptop and since I could get the wifi working it will stay but somehow the installation program didn't ask me where to put the bootloader and now I get grub when the laptop starts and not the windows based bootloader I have been using.
I think this is because I selected the 'Install alongside windows' option instead of the 'Some other way option'
It's awkward this way because I can't reinstall windows without it overwiting the mbr and losing access to mint and probably can't remove mint without scrunching grub in short I can't make any changes without reinstalling both.

Can somebody tell me how to move grub into the mint boot partition please?

[itsme4401]

I strongly disagree with the idea of replacing Grub.
If you have to reinstall MSWindows (better: when you have to reinstall MSWindows ) just do so! However, do it on the same partition as where MSWindows was!!
Having finished your reinstall you seem to have lost Mint. Search this forum for "grubrepair", act as instructed and you will refind your Mint as you left it.

If you wish to delete Mint completely (Why should you? ) you can search MSWindows-fora for: "Repair bootrecord" and you'll find out what to do then.

[Farstanley]

Opinionated rant. If you can't get into the forum spirit don't come here.

[wayne128]

Hi y'all I have a bit of a problem here

Today I installed mint 11 on my laptop and since I could get the wifi working it will stay but somehow the installation program didn't ask me where to put the bootloader and now I get grub when the laptop starts and not the windows based bootloader I have been using.
I think this is because I selected the 'Install alongside windows' option instead of the 'Some other way option'
It's awkward this way because I can't reinstall windows without it overwiting the mbr and losing access to mint and probably can't remove mint without scrunching grub in short I can't make any changes without reinstalling both.

Firstly, whenever you install Linux OS the installer usually would allow you to choose whether to install grub boot loader in MBR or root partition.

But nevermind, as long as you can boot your computer from hard disk, you can do something:
Assume you can boot Linux OS from hard disk install.
Then what you do is open a terminal, and type two commands,
1. sudo os-prober <enter>
this should scan all partitions and reports to you what other OS are detected.
most likely it will find your windows OS on certain partition.
if you are not sure, post the terminal output here for other to help

2. sudo update-grub <enter>
this will update grub that has been installed in MBR, mostly likely it will also detect win OS partition and update the grub , allowing you to select WinOS to boot when you reboot.

Can somebody tell me how to move grub into the mint boot partition please?

I shall change this to read how to move grub into the mint root partition

Usually grub would by default, or by your choice, stay installed on MBR.
However some people like to install grub on its root partition.

If you want to do that, the procedure is either
a . if you can boot Linux OS and run from hard disk installation

a.1 open terminal, get to root
a.2 type mount <enter>, read first line to see the partition you are running, says it is /dev/sda3
a.3 type grub-install /dev/sda3 <enter>
if it gives you no error report, you are done
if it complain and advise you to use --force command then do this
type grub-install --force /dev/sda3

b. if you run from Linux Live CD

b1. get into root terminal
b2. type os-prober to find which partition Linux OS has been installed, says it is /dev/sda3
b3. mount /dev/sda3 by
mount /dev/sda3 /mnt
b4. install grub to root partition by
grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda3

if it reports no error, you are done, that is grub is installed in root partition


BTW,
using the same command but a little change ( cut off the number 3), it will install grub onto MBR
grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda