SOLVED "windows failed to start" dual boot win7/13 Maya

[nobeernotv]

Hi All,

I’m a total newbie with Linux, and I’m trying to dual boot Mint 13 Maya with Windows 7 on a new Asus laptop I just got. I am also pretty much of a Windows dummy, I’ve owned apples for the last 12 years. Want to make the leap into open software but spent all yesterday trying to make it happen without success.

These are my computer’s specs:
Asus U47VC
x64
Intel i5-3210M CPU @2.5GhZ
BIOS Version American Megatrends Inc. U47VC.207, 4/26/2012
SMBIOS Version 2.7
750GB Hard Drive

I’m not sure whether the architecture on the Mint DVD is 32 or 64, my brother gave me the disk.

Read and followed this tutorial: http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2012/06/06/ho ... windows-7/

The install seemed to go fine, but when I went to reboot, and selected Mint in the Windows Boot Manager,

I got this error message:
“Windows failed to start. A recent hardware of software change might be the cause. To fix the problem:

1. Insert Windows installation disk (etc)
2. Choose language settings
3. Click “Reepair your computer”

File \NST\AutoNeoGrub0.mbr
Status: 0xc0000098
Info: The selected entry could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt. “

Thought my computer might be UEFI based on other people’s comments on the above tutorial (they had gotten the same error message) then

Followed this tutorial: http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2012/10/11/du ... ment-14478

Got the same error message in Windows Boot manager as before. (I’m still not sure whether my computer is UEFI).

Next I read this post that seemed relevant but quite a bit over my head:
http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/1002

I read this thread on using a USB stick instead of a DVD to boot UEFI—not sure if I should try that, don’t have a blank USB stick handy at the moment: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=107620

Next I read this thread on dual booting with Asus, but again it was a bit over my head and I wasn’t sure how much of it applied to my situation: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... ilit=+asus

I then read this post http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=116982 that seemed to suggest that instead of following the first tutorial I tried, which said to use the “Something else” option to partition the disk in the Mint Installer, I should have just used the “Install alongside” option in the installer. But the tutorial had warned not to do that because “ T h e p r o b l e m w i t h s e l e c t i n g t h e f i r s t o p t i o n , i s t h a t G R U B w i l l b e i n s t a l l e d i n t h e M B R o f t h e h a r d d r i v e , w h e r e i t w i l l o v e r w r i t e W i n d o w s 7 2 s b o o t f i l e s .”

After the two attempts, my partitions look pretty wacky:

free space 1mb
/dev/sda1 fat32 209mb/33mb used
/dev/sda2 134mb/unknown
/dev/sda3 ntfs 6459mb/41951mb used
/dev/sda6 ext4 500mb/52mb used
/dev/sda7 ext4 230962mb/7118mb used
/dev/sda8 swap 40000mb/0mb used
/dev/sda9 biosgrub 3mb/unknown
free space 0mb
/dev/sda4 ntfs 422905mb/3221mb used
/dev/sda5 ntfs 26843 mb/13919mb used
free space 0mb

Any help on getting this working, and also on how to best allocate my hard disk space among the partitions (I plan on mostly using Mint, keeping windows around for Skype, Netflix, and other random stuff) would be much appreciated!

I don't have much of anything stored on this machine yet, so if wiping everything and starting from scratch seems like the best bet that would be fine.

Many thanks,
Steve

[keghn]

There are two boot loaders "window boot manger". and "grub".
Grub is what Mint uses, and it is built into every live Mints distro's
What do thing about not using window OS insaller?
if you get your hands on a Mint live usb, or live dvd. Change your bios
to boot off the dvd, then turn off computer, plug live media in,
turn on computer. No window need here, to install linux on the same computer.
You can use window to get a live Mint from http://distrowatch.com, or from Mint web site,
and burn to a dvd or put it on usb thumb drive with windows unversal live usb maker or
whatever it is called.

After the installation windows and linux will work.
Windows is kind of new to multi operating system world,
and must of the people here like grub. I have been using it for
seven years and window and linx work fine on my system.
Do not run the live linux media in window virtual mode, or wubi.exe. No
need for window to install.
I do not use window's that much and do not keep up on window's linux installers.
I do use Linux a lot.

[dantropolis]

I've installed Mint to dual boot on both an older Toshiba Sattelite that came with Vista and a newer Lenovo laptop that came with Win 7.
Both of these laptops had all kinds of partitions from the factory: Windows recovery partition, hidden reinstall partition, etc.
For me, the easiest way to set up a dual boot was to perform a clean install of Windows before trying to install Mint. And I mean CLEAN, like reformat the drive to wipe all the factory partitions. You will not have use of the Windows Recovery button if you do this but I'm ok with that becasue I back-up my data.
You can download a fresh iso of win7 here and use your key to activate : http://www.pcworld.com/article/248995/h ... _disc.html
After win7 is installed and you've got a reasonably partitioned disc, it's real easy to pop in your Mint DVD and install. The Mint installer will take care of the partitioning for you. Works great!
(And I strongly recommend you install the bloatware free, shiny new copy of W7 no matter what you decide to do with the rest)
Hope this helps.
Enjoy!

[nobeernotv]

Thanks for weighing in guys. Keghn, your directions were not detailed enough to help a newbie like myself.

Dan, I followed your advice, but I ran into a dead end-- downloaded the Win 7 ISO, burned it to a DVD, restarted, but when I went to reformat and repartition in the windows installer, the installer told me that the clean Windows 7 couldn't be installed on the open partition because the partition wasn't in ntsf format. By that time I had already wiped everything else and couldn't restart in any OS. So now I am reinstalling Windows from the factory DVDs.

Can you give me any more specifics about how to "reformat the drive to wipe all the factory partitions" without running into this problem? Is there another program I should use to do this reformatting before I go to install the clean windows 7? Like what partitions and in what format should I have before I go to install?

Thanks,
Steve

[wayne128]

Can you give me any more specifics about how to "reformat the drive to wipe all the factory partitions" without running into this problem? Is there another program I should use to do this reformatting before I go to install the clean windows 7? Like what partitions and in what format should I have before I go to install?

Hi Steve,
Since you are in the position to clean everything, I suggest you use gparted , the partition editor used in most Linux OS, it can run from most Linux OS in Live DVD.

You can refer to this tutorial on many details
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/gparted.html

If you are lost, then, just try run gparted from you Linux Live DVD, then, capture the image of the hard disk partition ( like what you saw in the tutorial) and post it here.

To delete all partitions, you would check whether any partition is mounted, if it is, unmount it,
Turn off any Swap partition also.
Then you start from the highest partition number, select it, delete and apply.
do that one at a time, until the hard disk becomes just one unallocated space.


After that, you decide on what partition scheme you want.
There are too many workable partition scheme, choose what you want.
However, for your dual boot, you can do it very simply this way with 750G hard disk.

1. /dev/sda1, first partition
100G, format to ntfs, used to install windows7
When you install win7 later, remember to choose this 100G partition.
Win7 installer can see this ntfs partition of 100G and another one , fourth partition of some 500G.

2. /dev/sda2, second partition,
100G, format to ext4, use this for your Linux OS installation,
assign it to /

3. /dev/sda3, third partition, swap, give it 4G to 8G, or 1.5x to 2x your RAM

4. the rest, /dev/sda4, format to ntfs, this will become your data partition,
it can be shared by both Win and Lin OS. Both read and write, without much work from you.
That is, it should run out of the box on most Linux OS.



Edit. i reduced the text below purposedly to very tiny so as not to confuse you, you can always change it to large font if you are interested.

The above simple partition scheme should get you well into Dual boot.
Someday when you are more comfortable with Linux and Win together in the same computer, you might eventually want to try other distro or different version of Desktop environment.
Then a slight modification of the above partition scheme can allow you to handle more Linux OS, decribed below

4a: insteads of making /dev/sda4 to be ntfs partition:
change this to a extended partition, covering all the rest of the space.
extended partition is a container for many more partitions inside.

5. add a large partition, says 400G for your data, format it to ntfs, this will become /dev/sda5
6. the balance of the space inside , something like 100-130G, can become your playground to other Linux OS.
let it be unallocated if you do not have anything in mind.
when you want to play with another OS, just use gparted, add one 10G partition, format to ext4 or whatever that distros default format, then let the distros format it to its default, and install it as second linux OS
likewise, you add another 10G for next Linux OS... etc..
each time you add one more partition, gparted will assign a higher partition number like /dev/sda6, 7, 8, 9...
Enjoy you pay with Linux OS.

[nobeernotv]

Thanks Wayne! Very clear and concise, helpful explanation of partitioning. I set up partitions as you described, but I am still getting an error message in the Windows 7 installer. It asks "Where do you want to install Windows?" And shows the 4 partitions I made, but when I highlight the first partition, it says "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk is of the GPT partition style".

Any ideas about this?

Also, I made all 4 partitions "primary", does that make a difference?

And, I wasn't sure what you meant when you wrote under your instructions for Partition #2 to "assign it to /"

Cheers,
Steve

[wayne128]

it says "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. The selected disk is of the GPT partition style".

Well, this confirmed your hard disk was indeed GPT formatted.
However win7 64-bit supports uefi/GPT , so I wonder you have some issue of getting the wrong version of Win7 iso, I read win7 32 bit does not support GPT/uefi.

I do not think your issue is related to 4 primary partitions.
Win7 loves to be in Primary.


I cannot help you on anything uefi/GPT because I have not learnt.
As you are 12-yr with Mac and suddenly try both Win/Lin on the new laptop with GPT you have a very steep learning curve.

Please wait for someone else to help if you want to keep the hard disk in GPT format.

I would suggest you convert your GPT format to old legacy ( msdos, MBR) format, then your installation of Win7 32-bit or 64-bit and MOST linux OS will become much easier..

If you want to take this route, you could also simply convert the current 4 partitions in GPT to the same partitions to msdos.

My Asus laptop came with uefi capable, however, it can boot any msdos usb hard disk and usb sticks.
since you have no trouble booting Win7 CD you should not have trouble installing Win7 into msdos formatted hard disk.
Just in case you run into booting from USB drive problem or usb flash problem, you may have to go to your bios and disable uefi..or something similar.

Here is what a good step-by-step procedure from someone who had done it
http://www.firewing1.com/node/610#gpttombr
take note these steps seems very long, but when you do it, it is quite short

As the person was using fedora, thus his instruction was yum...
Since you are using LinuxMint, it is using apt-get ...
I would simply translate that for you so that you can follow the steps using Mint DVD.

1. boot and run from LinuxMint live DVD
2. to install gdisk, do these on terminal
sudo su ( this get you into root prompt #)
apt-get update ( this let you update from repos)
apt-get install gdisk ( this let you install gdisk to your Live LinuxMint)
3. you have nothing to backup so skip his step 4
4. now you attempt to convert GPT to msdos
gdisk /dev/sda
.....from here on you follow those detailed steps in the link
r
g
p
w

when done quit the gdisk with
q

at the end you should have a msdos partition hard disk.
now, you exit gdisk and use fdisk command to just confirm

fdisk -l ( this would let you see the msdos partitions table and details, such as similar to one hard disk I have)

Code: Select all

Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107861504 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773167 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000e18be

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *        2048    20482047    10240000    b  W95 FAT32
/dev/sdb2        20482048    61442047    20480000   83  Linux
/dev/sdb3        61442048   114853887    26705920    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdb4       114853888   155822079    20484096    7  HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

another check is another command

parted -l ( this should let you read a line that say partition table : msdos)

Code: Select all

Model: Seagate FreeAgent Go (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
 1      1049kB  10.5GB  10.5GB  primary  fat32        boot
 2      10.5GB  31.5GB  21.0GB  primary  ext4
 3      31.5GB  58.8GB  27.3GB  primary  ntfs
 4      58.8GB  79.8GB  21.0GB  primary  ntfs

I wasn't sure what you meant when you wrote under your instructions for Partition #2 to "assign it to /"

This is part of the Mint installation steps.
When you are at this step , you get similar to this image but yours have different partition layout
http://www.linuxbsdos.com/wp-content/up ... 00x371.png

you would select /dev/sda2

then next step, image similar to this http://www.linuxbsdos.com/wp-content/up ... stall3.png

you would select
1. full size
2. use as : click and choose ext4
3. format the partitions: click it with a tick
4. Mount point : click and select /

[nobeernotv]

Hey Wayne,

Thanks once again for the clear instructions, and for translating that tutorial into "mint-ese".

I successfully converted the partitions from GPT and was finally able to install and run that stripped down Win7 that Dan recommended.

Now when go to install Mint, I no longer see the option to "install alongside"-- so,

From here on out should I follow the instructions for installation type "Something else" that were in the original tutorial I had tried to follow, at http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2012/06/06/ho ... ndows-7/2/

(These instructions were to create a 500mb "/boot" partition, assign "/home" as the mount point for the big partition, and set the "/boot" partition as the "Device for boot loader installation" in the lower dropdown menu, then run the installation and add Mint to the Windows boot menu using EasyBCD).

Or is there a better route to go from here?

Also, Dan, the pared down Win7 I installed can't seem to detect my wifi-- will I need to load some drivers to get the machine working fully in Windows?

Thanks again for your help guys-- seems like I'm almost there!

Steve

[wayne128]

Hi Steve,
Glad to read that you have successfully converted from GPT to MBR (msdos).

Yes, you should use the 'Something Else' option, so that you select your /dev/sda2 as /, installer will detect Swap without your input.

Then when you are on this step http://www.linuxbsdos.com/wp-content/up ... 00x371.png
you would select your /dev/sda to install boot loader

Selecting /dev/sda means you ask installer to install grub2, its default boot loader, to the MBR of the first boot drive.
This is the simple method. Should work 90% of the time, if it does not work, it can be repair relatively easy.

You do not need to use /boot partition. I think it is not necessary for you so that you have one less thing to bug.

In this case, you do not follow your link to use Win7 EasyBCD. This method of using EasyBCD is very good also, it can survive Win7 file checking and occasionally repair and the result is it will wipe away your Grub2 in MBR, making your Linux OS unbootable. But don't worry too much, if that happen, you just need to follow a simple procedure to reinstall grub2.

Also, Dan, the pared down Win7 I installed can't seem to detect my wifi-- will I need to load some drivers to get the machine working fully in Windows?

Regarding this issue, when you install Win7 from a vanilla Win7 ISO file, all you have is the base.
Once that is working, you need to install all the drivers, usually you should have one to several CD that contain all drivers of your laptop. If you have it, just install all drivers. If you do not have it, go to Asus website, key in your product name/model, and from there download all drivers, install them, you should have other workings such as
graphic, sound, internet ( wired), internet (wireless), chipset, etc.


for example, Asus X42J drivers link, click OS, such as Win7, you will get a full list of drivers.
http://sg.asus.com/Notebooks/Versatile_ ... /#download


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[nobeernotv]

Success! Both run and I can choose between them on booting!

Thanks very much for your patience and precision in bringing me up to speed on this stuff Wayne. I will try to pass the knowledge along when I get the chance.

Kind regards,
Steve