Grub - missing the choice of Windows boot entry

[tymentide]

I did a search for this type of problem within this forum, however, I did not find the exact same circumstances that I'm experiencing, so I decided to post this problem and see what comes back.

This computer has a dual-boot Windows 98SE and Windows XP ("C" and "D" drives respectively) set up. This afternoon I installed Gloria on the second hard drive (hdb) using EXT3 formatting on six separate partitions (not including swap). There were no problems with the install. Upon reboot, the screen showed a black screen with "grub loading." and then a menu appeared, however, there was no menu entry for Windows. I shut the system down and rebooted (2 times) with the same result.

I then rebooted, went into terminal mode, switched to /grub and attempted to run sudo grub with the reply, "command not found". When I listed the files within that directory, there must have been 50 unrecognisable files - excluding menu.lst or any config files. I have changed/edited GRUB in the past and it appears the present version bears no likeness to the older version.

In the past, I have had PCLinuxOS 2009.2 installed on this machine without problem. I am wondering if there is a problem with this newer (beta) version of GRUB to where it will not "pick up" Windows boot loader entries. (I have since run fdisk /mbr from a windows 98 floppy to restore the original Windows boot.)

Is there a way to install an older (workable) version of GRUB on this set up? My first inclination is to scrub Mint and return to PCLinuxOS, however, I'm thinking that would be the "easier, softer way", and I would be missing an opportunity to learn more about Linux if I did that action.

I will gladly provide more detailed information if needed to solve this problem.

Have a peace-filled day,
tymentide

[Jeff91]

You just need to point out your Windows partitions to your grub2 boot loader. Check out this thread over on the Ubuntu forums. If you have any specific questions regarding adding your Windows to grub2 after reading through it feel free to post them here.

EDIT: You should also be sure to read stickies before posting in a sub forum.

Regards,
~Jeff

[tymentide]

To start off with: thanks for your response. For some reason, I did not notice that "sticky note" or I would not have continued with my question.

However, during installation, there was no indication that GRUB2 was installed. The only version I noticed was GRUB v0.97 beta 1 (or something like that). Perhaps my mistake was in "assuming" that the previous version of GRUB was used.

I would suggest that the MINT maintainers publish the "sticky note" reference somewhere in the installation documentation, since it does seem to be a reoccurring problem with multi-boot systems. The question that sticks (sic!) in my mind is: why come out with a GRUB v2 (that sometimes does not automatically pick up Windows partitions/boots) when the previous version did the job and did it well? (Rhetorical question, for sure.)

After reviewing that "sticky note" reference, I decided to "keep it simple" and revert to PCLinuxOS 2009.2 - the one with the "working" GRUB. I may return to Mint when I'm assured that those GRUB2 boot issues are resolved.

Have a peace-filled day.

[Jeff91]

Because grub2 offers alot of nice features legacy grub does not. And IMO the boot loader is a very poor reason to choose one distro over another...

~Jeff

[tymentide]

Because grub2 offers alot of nice features legacy grub does not. And IMO the boot loader is a very poor reason to choose one distro over another...

~Jeff

Hello Jeff,

If I had tried to install Mint on one of my other machines, I probably could have waited until I found the answer to the GRUB2 problem. However, I was installing Mint on my main PC - which also contains Windows installations -- and which I access frequently throughout the day for my financial and newsgroup programs. Being "locked out", unable to boot into XP was (is) not a choice. Now that I am aware of which version of GRUB that Gloria is installing, I will test it out on one of the other computers before attempting to install it on the "main" PC.

And, by the way, I have experimented with many different Linux distributions - going all the way back to the mid 90's. Up until this time, I never experienced a boot problem such as this, so perhaps you can see how very surprised I was when I could not see or boot into my XP partition.

Have a peace-filled day,
Bill