Help! Mist Install doesn't work, and Grub makes XP fail too.

Questions about Grub, UEFI,the liveCD and the installer
Forum rules
Before you post read how to get help. Topics in this forum are automatically closed 6 months after creation.
Locked
carltonh
Level 2
Level 2
Posts: 52
Joined: Sat Dec 23, 2006 12:34 am
Location: Dallas, Texas

Help! Mist Install doesn't work, and Grub makes XP fail too.

Post by carltonh »

I tried to be extremely extremely careful, but the Mint 2.2 install still messed up my XP installation. XP has to be my main system until I can get both it and Linux running well enough to switch. Now, if I try to start my XP hard drive, Grub starts and fails leaving no options. How do I remove Grub? Actually, I specifically avoided installing Linux on any part of the XP hard drive, but the install must have decided to do so itself without permission or warning.

The LiveCD part of Mint 2.2 seemed to work fine. (Although I tried to do a MD5 check, I failed to figure out any program to show this checksum.)

I originally tried to install Mint to an IDE USD hard drive. It repeatedly failed mid-install. MintDisk gave me the idea that the problem might be because Mint automatically mounted USB drives, but mounting them crashes the install. So I unmounted the USB drive, and that part worked. It claimed that it successfully finished the Install. However, it woudn't boot up. I tried internallly mounting the IDE drive instead of in the USB enclosure. I reinstalled, it claimed to finish successfully. However, when I booted up, it brought up a Grub menu, and every possible option failed, including letting me boot my XP drive that should have been unaffected. So then I completely take out the IDE drive where I installed Mint. This part is highly annoying. I still get a Grub error message with only the XP hard drive in the PC that shouldn't have been affected by the Mint install. Now, absolutely nothing works on my Desktop PC, and I'm having to use my laptop.

Please, I hope someone has some advice on removing the Grub damage to my main hard drive. I'm not annoyed at Mint itself. This is probably a bad part of the Ubuntu system that hasn't been changed by Mint. I with there were warnings letting you know what GParted was going to do.
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
User avatar
justo
Level 1
Level 1
Posts: 46
Joined: Sat Dec 23, 2006 2:47 am
Location: TEXAS

Post by justo »

I did that too.It has something to do with the thing called HDO where it installs.Your windows is still there. Use a PC Linux CD and install it on the same partition you have Mint and Windows will show up with Linux on the boot list.As good as new.
carltonh
Level 2
Level 2
Posts: 52
Joined: Sat Dec 23, 2006 12:34 am
Location: Dallas, Texas

Post by carltonh »

Well, I'm not sure what exactly caused the problem, and I'm not certain how I fixed it. But I reattached the Linux hard drive, and made some changes to the BIOS. For whatever reason, the BIOS was set with Plug-n-Play OS set to disabled. I changed it to Enabled. I'm not sure if that was the problem, but now both the XP and Linux Mint installations run fine, and I'm typing from Linux Mint.

One minor problem remains, that Mint won't yet allow screen resolutions above 1024x768, but my monitor allows 1280x1024.

This does make me too worried to try to install Linux to my Laptop yet. For the laptop, I may just try to use a Flash drive OS.
Locked

Return to “Installation & Boot”