[SOLVED]Mint Install Broke Windows
Posted: Sat Mar 23, 2013 7:00 pm
I have preserved my original, lengthy post but for convenience sake I decided to add it to my first post.
After some digging around, and good advice from the people who responded to my thread, I simply made sure to free up space via windows, and at the same time took the liberty of creating various partitions for swap space an so forth. the link that helped me is as follows
http://abeykoon.blogspot.com/2013/01/se ... -dual.html
not so difficult, one has to ensure to install grub to the 14gb / directory during the install phase.
after this(not mentioned in the article) you need to boot mint somehow. the Master Boot Record does not detect it automatically. a small program sorts this out nicely via windows. almost forgot to add the link
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS- ... yBCD.shtml
Thanks and Enjoy, peeps
I apologize if this has been raised before
Today I decided to install Mint on my Tosh Satellite c660 laptop, but for various reasons I wanted to hold on to as much of my windows as I could. I am not a total noob, I have been using linux for a few years now.
I started with Ubuntu, but as with many other people, this became too heavy and strained as time passed. my poor old system(this was an old laptop ofcourse) could not keep up, and I wanted something with a decent set of out of the box features. MATE mint 13 appealed to me.
I downloaded mint 32 bit after much consideration(the internet is rather limited where I am, 700mb for the ISO is quite a plunge) and was impressed with how much lighter the aging system felt after a fresh install. I had wiped my dual boot XP and Buntu 11 for Maya.
I have had my lappy since December and am quite happy with it. a modest intel dual core 2.2 with 2gb ram and 1gb gpu, came standard with Win 7.
Concerned about the warranty, I continued to use it exclusively as a 7 machine, but today I decided not to care and dug out my mint live USB, excited to be free of proprietary software once more. well not entirely, mostly for gaming reasons, I was going to hold on to my 7. (Im more of a console gamer tbh, but still)
The installation was quick and smooth, everything worked unlike before where there were a few drivers and ish that I had to hunt down, and I was eager to test some of the programs that had either strained my old laptop or not worked at all.
All was awesome until I decided to reboot into windows, and boom it hits me with a blue flash and reboots. My worst nightmare, broken windows
from past experience, windows startup recovery(which was my only option from windows side) bombed grub in the restoration process and made my old PC entirely unbootable, and I cancelled this to boot back into mint.
Currently I am backing up the windows partition which is still accessible and intact, before I do anything. I dont understand why windows 7 can boot in recovery mode and completely fail to recognize a partition. Is it possible that in the installation process (which seemingly wasnt so smooth) broke the windows partition instead of resizing it? has anyone else had this experience?
is there possibly some utility that allows me to "normalize" the partitions so that it doesnt seem "broken" to windows7?
in the startup repair it listed the volume as 0mb. im not too worried about re installing mint but I would rather not re install windows as I dont have a disk.
Could I get it to remove mint and restore the partition to original? and then edit it from within windows so that any changes do not affect it when I re install. I should have thought about that, but I didnt expect it to bust my windows.
thanks in advance, im stumped.
VH
After some digging around, and good advice from the people who responded to my thread, I simply made sure to free up space via windows, and at the same time took the liberty of creating various partitions for swap space an so forth. the link that helped me is as follows
http://abeykoon.blogspot.com/2013/01/se ... -dual.html
not so difficult, one has to ensure to install grub to the 14gb / directory during the install phase.
after this(not mentioned in the article) you need to boot mint somehow. the Master Boot Record does not detect it automatically. a small program sorts this out nicely via windows. almost forgot to add the link
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/OS- ... yBCD.shtml
Thanks and Enjoy, peeps
I apologize if this has been raised before
Today I decided to install Mint on my Tosh Satellite c660 laptop, but for various reasons I wanted to hold on to as much of my windows as I could. I am not a total noob, I have been using linux for a few years now.
I started with Ubuntu, but as with many other people, this became too heavy and strained as time passed. my poor old system(this was an old laptop ofcourse) could not keep up, and I wanted something with a decent set of out of the box features. MATE mint 13 appealed to me.
I downloaded mint 32 bit after much consideration(the internet is rather limited where I am, 700mb for the ISO is quite a plunge) and was impressed with how much lighter the aging system felt after a fresh install. I had wiped my dual boot XP and Buntu 11 for Maya.
I have had my lappy since December and am quite happy with it. a modest intel dual core 2.2 with 2gb ram and 1gb gpu, came standard with Win 7.
Concerned about the warranty, I continued to use it exclusively as a 7 machine, but today I decided not to care and dug out my mint live USB, excited to be free of proprietary software once more. well not entirely, mostly for gaming reasons, I was going to hold on to my 7. (Im more of a console gamer tbh, but still)
The installation was quick and smooth, everything worked unlike before where there were a few drivers and ish that I had to hunt down, and I was eager to test some of the programs that had either strained my old laptop or not worked at all.
All was awesome until I decided to reboot into windows, and boom it hits me with a blue flash and reboots. My worst nightmare, broken windows
from past experience, windows startup recovery(which was my only option from windows side) bombed grub in the restoration process and made my old PC entirely unbootable, and I cancelled this to boot back into mint.
Currently I am backing up the windows partition which is still accessible and intact, before I do anything. I dont understand why windows 7 can boot in recovery mode and completely fail to recognize a partition. Is it possible that in the installation process (which seemingly wasnt so smooth) broke the windows partition instead of resizing it? has anyone else had this experience?
is there possibly some utility that allows me to "normalize" the partitions so that it doesnt seem "broken" to windows7?
in the startup repair it listed the volume as 0mb. im not too worried about re installing mint but I would rather not re install windows as I dont have a disk.
Could I get it to remove mint and restore the partition to original? and then edit it from within windows so that any changes do not affect it when I re install. I should have thought about that, but I didnt expect it to bust my windows.
thanks in advance, im stumped.
VH