Dual boot: After making new partition GRUB is not working

[Jonas]

Hello,

I am running a dual boot, Vista and Mint Elyssa on my laptop.
After making a new partition (something I really needed to do) the GRUB stopped working. I now can neither load Vista nor Elyssa.

Instead of GRUB I get the following message:
"Interrupted operation: Insert the Recovery CD or other Recovery Media and reboot your PC..."

My guess (I'm a newbie) is that by making a new partition I screwed with the order of the other partitions on my hard drive and thus nothing is working as it should.
I am however quite sure that everything is still there somewhere. If I could only get GRUB to work again, or only get access to Vista so that I can remove the partition I just created and restore order.

This is what I have tried so far:
Inserting the Live CD and in terminal trying to restore GRUB.
Result:

sudo grub

GNU GRUB version 0.97 (640K lower / 3072K upper memory)

[ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB
lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists the possible
completions of a device/filename. ]

grub> find /boot/grub/stage1
(hd0,6)

grub> root (hd0,6)
Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

grub> setup (hd0)
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0)"... 18 sectors are embedded.
succeeded
Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0)1+18 p (hd0,6)/boot/grub/stage2
/boot/grub/menu.lst"... failed

Error 12: Invalid device requested

I have searched the internet for this error message, but I have only found it in relations to other problems.

Here is some additional information about my system:

mint@mint ~ $ sudo fdisk -l
omitting empty partition (5)

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x7a695750

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 6 48163+ de Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 * 7 1965 15735667+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 1966 14594 101436961+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 1966 12197 82188508+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 12675 14315 13181301 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 14316 14593 2233003+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
mint@mint ~ $

Any ideas on where to go from here?
Cheers,

P.S. A friend of mine just informed me he had a similar problem with a dual boot. He re-installed Linux to get GRUB back. I REALLY hope it doesn't have to come to that

[Fred]

Jonas,

You should be able to get your install back without reinstalling Mint. From the Mint live cd open a terminal and type:

sudo grub

root (hd0,5)

setup (hd0)

quit

Then, with sda6 mounted, open a terminal and type:

gksu gedit /media/sda6/boot/grub/menu.lst

This will open your menu.lst for editing. Go down to the booting stanza for Mint and you will see in the line for the kernel it says something like root=/dev/sda5. You want to change it to sda6 instead of sda5. Save and exit.

Reboot your system and you should be back in business.

Fred

[Jonas]

Hello Fred,

Thanks for your quick reply.

I've tried the solution you suggested. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work.
Result:

grub> root (hd0,5)
Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x7

grub>

Being quite new to this with Terminal, how do I go about mounting sda6?

Cheers,

[Jonas]

Could it be worth trying the Super GRUB disk?

Cheers,

[Jonas]

Hello again,

I have now tried to solve this problem by using the Live CD, the Super GRUB Disk and the advices found on this web site:
http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/ ... nstallgrub

However, following the links for the different problems and errors just got me wandering in circles.

One thing seems clear though. When I created a new partition, between C: and D: in Vista, it messed with the whole numbering system for partitions and thus non of the OS can be loaded.

If anyone out there has had the same problem with partitions and solved it, please provide me with some advice. It will be duly appreciated.

Cheers,

[DataMan]

Looking through this thread, it looks like you've gotten very solid advice and done all of the right things. The only thing I would offer as a near-total left field option is to boot to the LiveCD and open a version of GParted. Take a look at the sda identifier for your Lx installation. See if it compares to how you did the grub setup as was suggested (hd=sda-1). This makes little sense I know, but on those rare occasions when logic seems missing, trying the un-logical sometimes works!

Good Luck,

DataMan

[Fred]

DataMan,

This thread is several months old. The spam above brought it back to life.

I don't remember this poster or why I didn't finish helping him find a solution. I just don't remember what was going on or what I was doing at the time. But I shouldn't have left him before a solution was found.

I suspect his problem might be in his /etc/fstab file at this point. Probably needs to run "blkid" in a terminal and check his UUIDs. Either that or he didn't give me accurate information about his partition table. A screen shot of Gparted would clarify that pretty easily. But after 4 - 5 months, I suspect/hope he has resolved the issue by now.

Fred

[DataMan]

Thanks Fred,

Missed the small details of the age of the post at the wee hours ... .

Spam has been reported.

DataMan