[SOLVED] Dual Boot W 7 + Mint 14 + EasyBCD = Problem

[DummyGoat]

Hello all.

I'll try to make this as quick as possible. Had W7 and Mint 13 running correctly before. Cleaned it all up and re installed Mint 14. Did the same process as before by using EasyBCD to add Mint 14 into Windows boot loader.

I got 2 HDD's.

HDD 1 - W7 + Mint 14 root partition.

HDD 2 - No system files or Mint partitions, just data.

GRUB is installed on HDD 2 MBR since I don't want it to override Windows bootloader which is in HDD 1.

However, for some reason, this time when I decide to boot up Mint I only get some type of command prompt which says something like almost exactly like this (taken from another thread):

GRUB4DOS 0.4.5b 2011-11-27, Mem: 592K/2357M/1408M, End: 35560D

[ 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> _


I've been trying to search for this specific issue but nothing seems similar to my case. I have no idea why it worked before and why it isn't working now. Keep in mind that Mint 14 installed correctly and so did Grub.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

[Orbmiser]

GRUB is installed on HDD 2 MBR

Give exact device as should be something like sda and number?
As HDD 2 isn't a valid grub entry.

My setup

Winxp - sda1
Win7 - sda2

root / - sda5 and also where I pointed grub to load
/home - sda6
swap - sda7

Booted up Win7 and easyBCD and added sda5 to the entry.
.

[wayne128]

I have no idea why it worked before and why it isn't working now. Keep in mind that Mint 14 installed correctly and so did Grub.

No idea also.
It was supposed to work.
But then Mint14 had newer grub, grub2.00 with uefi stuff...

anyway, here there are two recommendation:

1. first level of trying to work around is

a. boot from Mint14 DVD
b. open a terminal, type this command

Code: Select all

sudo os-prober

and figure out what is the root partition Mint installed to, lets says it is /dev/sda9
you should replace /dev/sda9 by the actual number showed in sudo os-prober.
c. next command is to mount the mint14 root partition with

Code: Select all

sudo mount /dev/sda9 /mnt

d. then next command is to install grub2 to its root partition

Code: Select all

sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda9 --force

e. it should report no error at the end.
f. reboot to Win7
g. run easybcd, delete the old grub2 entry.
h. add a new grub2 entry
i. reboot and select grub2 entry , hopefully it boots up mint14

2. if first lever is not working, then, go second level,
go to the ubuntu boot repair https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair
get the iso, burn image to CD, run the CD and follow their instruction to repair grub.

[DummyGoat]

sda (my ssd)
sda1 - W7 reserved partition
sda2 - W7 Installation
sda3 - Mint 14 root partition

sdb (HDD with data)
sdb1 - Only HDD partition, data inside.


Tried to install GRUB on both sdb MBR but also tried to install GRUB on sda3 but it still didn't worked.

Going to try what wayne128 said and see if it works. Will report later.

[DummyGoat]

I followed the guide by wayne128 by using the terminal and it worked flawlessly. Thank you very much.

[hellodave]

Sorry if this is seen as thread jacking, but I had exactly the same problem as DummyGoat.
I was just about to try the command line fix posted by wayne128, but then, just for a laugh, I added another boot entry with EasyBCD using legacy grub instead of grub2. That fixed it, I am now dual booting win7 and Mint14 no problems
I'm pretty new to Linux, this is the first installation on my main machine, I don't really know what grub is.
My question is, am I going to have problems down the road with this setup?
Should I really be using grub2?