upgrade win xp to 7 without affecting mint

[srinathmkce]

i am using windows xp and linux mint as dual boot. I have installed linux mint in seperate space ohly. Now, i wish to change to windows 7 by formatting windows xp. But, by reading some posts i came to know that formatting windows xp will also change the boot menu. I need to format xp at the same time i dont want to lose my linux mint system. I dont have linux mint live cd with me right now. Is there any easiest method available? please suggest

[mintybits]

Have you got any other disks in your system, or even a USB stick?
One way is to install grub to the MBR of a different, bootable device so that when Windows 7 installs and fixes the MBR of its disk you can still boot grub and linux from the other device.
Inside Mint run "sudo dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc" to change the device grub is installed to.

[HughT]

Hi srinathmkce, I've not tried doing what you intend to do, but I think windows will normally install on sda1, ignoring everything else. But it will over-write the mbr, so you will have no way of booting into Mint. Here's an alternative way to re-install Mint's bootloader back to the mbr and get the grub option to choose which Operating System you want. However, you will need a Mint disk to do this in live CD mode. The commands are as follows:

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sudo mount /dev/sdXY /mnt

replace X and Y with the appropriate drive and partition for Mint boot.

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sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sdX

note - there's a gap between =/mnt and /dev, and no partition number after sdX
re-boot into Mint then

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sudo update-grub

hope this helps

[remoulder]

easiest method available? please suggest

Backup mint data, install Windows 7, re-install mint, restore data. This the 'easiest' way.