Dual booting Vista and Linux Mint

[Fred]

Knight319,

Sorry, I didn't make that very clear. You want to move the sda3 fat32 partition back to the point it is up against the sda2 ntfs partition. That puts your liberated space, ie. new partitions, at the end of the partition table.

All the new partitions you will make will be extended logical partitions. You can have only 4 partitions on a disk. You can have 4 primary partitions, which can not be subdivided. You can only have one extended partition on a disk. This partition can be subdivided into logical partitions, but they must be contiguous . The whole group of extended logical partitions counts as one of the 4 allowed partitions.

You would make a extended logical partition of 2 Gig. and format it as swap.

You would make another extended logical partition of 8 Gig. formated ext3 used as / (root).

You would make another extended logical partition of whatever is left, (about 4 Gig.). It will be formatted as ext3 and used as /home.

Does that help?

Fred

[MagnusB]

One of the radio shows on the GTA: Vice City video game, I think Pastor Richards say "My patented definition of madness is doing something over and over, and expecting different result."

[Fred]

MagnusB,

Sorry I am not familiar with the GTA: Vice City video game. But I do consider myself a student of madness.

There is probably more truth in my first signature line and Pastor Richards statement than most of us would like to admit.

Knight319, don't give up on me now. We are almost there and ready for the fun part. Just move that fat32 partition back to its original position, adjacent to the ntfs partition, and we are good to go!

Then just run the install routine. Format and mount the partitions in manual and enjoy the resulting install.

Don't panic if the install doesn't pick up your Vista partition right, leaving you unable to boot into Vista. If this happens it is easily fixed.

Fred

[Knight319]

Sorry, I've been a bit busy.

Alright, so this is basically what you mean? (Screenshot included, I also forgot to switch the Unallocated 4 gig to the ext3 format, but I didn't apply it yet, so you get the picture) If so, then I guess I'm ready to move onto the final steps?

[Fred]

Knight319,

That's it my friend. Just make that last partition and you got it licked.

Fred

PS I wasn't trying to rush you... just a lttle humor. I would be the last one to rush you. Slow and easy is my motto.

[Knight319]

Thanks again Fred.

Ok well, Mint installed alright, but I have a few issues... First off, I apparently tried to force it to run in 1440 x 900 resolution before I tried finding drivers and now I can't get the system to go to the GUI. Another issue is that I get a message when I try to open up Envy saying something isn't installed. My last issue is now I can't get Vista to boot. It will stay in the booting screen until I have to push the power off button. Is there anyway I can reinstall the Vista mbr instead of using Grub?

I am currently posting this from my laptop for the record.

[Fred]

Knight319,

Sorry you are having problems. Did you download and burn Supergrub? If so you can use that to boot into Vista and fix the Vista boot loader back into the mbr.

Did Vista boot ok from the Mint grub screen before you had graphics problems?

Fred

[Knight319]

Well actually... Vista booted after I restarted. Now my only issue is fixing the MBR and attempting to fix the screen res problem. Would I be able to fix the screen res in Mint's recovery mode?

So if I download and burn Supergrub, will it fix my MBR so I don't have to use Grub and use Vista's default one instead?

[Fred]

Knight319,

I'll tell you what I would do. You just did the install right?

Ok, instead of fighting with it I would just start over with the live cd and reinstall Mint 4. It will only take you a few min. to do that. It isn't like you will be loosing any data or anything.

First thing when you boot up after the install, try booting into Vista first. That will tell us if the installer got the Vista installation correct. if that works ok then reboot to Mint 4. Don't set a root password. Just a user name and user password during the install. Then go to envy and try to install the drivers. If it tells you you need something else go into synaptic and install it.

Fred

[Knight319]

Quick question before I do so. I went to the Supergrub website and downloaded it. Apparently I can put it on my USB Flash drive.

So will Supergrub completely remove Grub and restore my old Vista MBR? I would prefer to use my Vista MBR and not Grub.

[Fred]

Yes you can reinstall your Windows mbr but it will only boot Vista. You can't use it to boot anything else.

In order to get Mint or anything else to work on the machine you will have to break with the Windows loader, and use something else. Grub is a good solid boot loader. Been around for a while, don't be afraid of it.

Fred

[Fred]

Knight319,

I see you have left the forum so I am going to get some dinner. I don't really think you have a big problem.

My biggest concern was if the installer would pick up the Vista install correctly. Apparently it did. Even if it hadn't, we could fix it, but that was my concern.

Did you say what kind of video card you had? I had thought you said it was an ATI but I didn't see it when I glanced back through your posts. When you come back up in Mint, start a new thread asking for help getting your ATI or whatever video card working. There are others much better qualified than I at dealing with video problems.

If you are still having problems when I get back I'll see what I can do to help.

I really think you have it licked at this point though.

Fred

[Knight319]

I'm a bit stumped. I booted into Supergrub but it's all in spanish and I have no clue what to do...

I do have an ATI X1300 Pro PCI-E 16x card. For some reason, something is wrong now since I logged out of Vista. After selecting Vista in Grub, a black screen saying at the top Windows Boot Manager and says that the file \Windows\system32\winload.exe is now missing.

Ugh, I believe I may have just hosed my Vista installation...

[Fred]

Knight319,

Don't panic. I doubt you have actually lost winload.exe. Vista has a problem booting when a usb stick has booted and is still attached. Talk about a flaky boot set-up! Many posts on the web about false messages about loosing winload.exe. This is a known issue.

Remove the usb stick and try booting through grub. Did you try to reinstall Mint 4 or are you just trying to get the Vista mbr back?

I still suggest reinstalling Mint 4 and then lets see where you are.

You may want to look at this url, complements of Empyrean.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=616540#2

Fred

PS: I would suggest you download the English version of Supergrub, since you don't speak Spanish.

[Knight319]

Thanks again.

I attempted another installation of Linux Mint. Everything seems to work so far, but I'm waiting for it to finish updating before I change anything else... Don't want this to turn into what happened previously.

I guess I'll stick with Grub for the time being.

Thank you for all the help, Fred. I greatly appreciate the time you took to help me with Linux Mint.

Once again, thank you very much.

[Fred]

Knight319,

You are welcome. I don't mind helping someone that is willing to put forth the effort and actually wants to learn. Now if someone wants instant gratification and for me to wave a magic wand and fix everything, well, I am not your man.

I didn't get started with Linux until later in life, even though that was several years ago now. Linux was much less user friendly then. I remember beating my head against a wall, so to speak, many a night trying to get it to work. I also got a lot of help from many others that I had never met that were willing to take their time to help me. So in one sense I am just returning the favor.

If you want to thank me, on down the line as you become more proficient, take a few min. and help someone else.

Let me know how this install goes.

Fred