Grub not installed after celena instalation

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carlos
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Grub not installed after celena instalation

Post by carlos »

Ok need a bit of help here. A friend of mine, an old time xp user wants to try Mint.

He dled and burned celena. When he first tried to install he was locked into the Migration Assistant, well I told him to make sure he avoided using it. Obviously he was able to continue with installation there after.

Well low and behold 30 minutes later Celena was installed. The machine reboots, but no grub screen at all. He made sure to to "esc" right after the bios loads too, so I'm pretty stumped.

BTW, Windows is on one drive (master) and linux is on a 2nd drive (slave).
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Husse

Post by Husse »

No grub at all?
Not even after Esc?
Does it boot right into Windows?
If so I think the install got screwed up and no grub was installed
Try to repair grub first
http://www.linuxmint.com/wiki/index.php ... _your_grub
If no success I'm afraid you have to reinstall
carlos
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Post by carlos »

Yep goes straight into windows even after hitting esc... Funny thing is a grub directory is there, we used the ext plugin for xp to see what mint installed.

Thanks Husse, I'll let you know what happens.
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Exakun
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Post by Exakun »

I don't know if you've solved the problem yet, but if you can't get into Linux to fix GRUB you should be able to specify which hard disk to boot from. Typically you press DEL or F12 to get the menu at boot but it depends on your hardware.

Hope this helps :D
Husse

Post by Husse »

Funny thing is a grub directory is there
Then you will be able to fix it following the wiki, I'm pretty sure - but .....
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merlwiz79
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Re: Grubbified the wrong darn Drive.

Post by merlwiz79 »

Remowylliams wrote:Ok Call this a bug, call this a programmed hatred for Windows..
but I'll tell you right now, Something needs to be fixed before
someone else bumps into this.

Laptop with a USB 2.0 drive connected. And an internal drive with
FreeBSD and Xp

I went through the install proceedure. Made sure to tell mint install
I only want to use sdb (the usb drive that is connected.) Went through
the deal, and rebooted. Everything is great till the boot....

The laptop screen sits with just a _ in the upper left corner.

I figured fine, I'll boot my regular drive, so I flip through the bios,
set it to boot the internal drive and whalla.. I have Grub where there
should be no grub.

Infact I have grub showing me all the lovely things I can boot, including
my XP, never mind it over wrote my bootloader... NGBOOT..
So fine I can boot using grub.. as long as the USB drive is connected.

I can fix my bootloader issue but only because I know what to do. But most people wouldn't know at all.

The fact that Grub hangs because there's no USB drive is quite an Erk..
Can someone please tell me this is something that can be fixed fast?

With all the USB drives available now, I can see people wanting to try
mint linux and be safe with it, only to have their system become
a Grub slave.

Thanks.
When you installed you probably didn't tell grub to install to hd1(sdb) instead left it with hd0(sda).
You can try to install grub to the USB drive.
Then use the Windows cd to restore the MBR for Windows XP.
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merlwiz79
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Re: Grubbified the wrong darn Drive.

Post by merlwiz79 »

Remowylliams wrote:
When you installed you probably didn't tell grub to install to hd1(sdb) instead left it with hd0(sda).
You can try to install grub to the USB drive.
Then use the Windows cd to restore the MBR for Windows XP.
I'm not sure where I would be having an opportunity to do this. Would you care to specify where you tell Grub to do this? I'm still not clear why in the world Grub should automatically default to a drive you aren't installing the operating system to.
The default is hd0 it was an advance setting before you click install.
You can use Linux Mint to reinstall Grub then use the BIOS to select the USB drive as the 1st option.(check if your BIOS allows this before doing anything)

In terminal use these commands.

Code: Select all

sudo grub
root (hd1)
setup (hd1)
quit
sudo grub-install /dev/sdb
Don't for get to edit menu.list from hd0 to hd1
While having BIOS selected for the internal hard drive to boot from, you can use the XP install cd to reinstall XP's MBR.
Just use Repair console to run these commands:

Code: Select all

fixmbr
fixboot
exit
I believe these are all the commands.
Now when you reboot just use the Bios to select the correct hard drive to boot.(Internal if you don't need Grub and USB for Linux Mint)
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Husse

Post by Husse »

The default is hd0 it was an advance setting before you click install.
To clarify - you get a window with something like "This is the settings you are going to install with" (note like)
There is a button "Advanced" and in there you can select the drive you install Grub to
I would like it to somehow tell that you have this choice there more clearly, but this is how ubiquity (the installler) is and I believe we have to do with that
Husse

Post by Husse »

No other drive device should ever be touched by install software that isn't specifically included/selected by the user.
Agree - to a point
I believe the MBR of the "first disk" is default for grub - but I may be wrong. But for most people that is the best choice...
Husse

Post by Husse »

We're aware of the problem with external disks and this must be a problem to all....
I have mentioned this to Clem so he can think about it, but it is not simple....
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