strange behaviour on trying to boot 'SORTED'

[Bari]

I have downloaded and installed mint 17 cinnamon as a dual boot with win 7, had no problems with the install. At the end I chose to restart and the disc was ejected as normal, on restart grub didn't come up and the laptop booted straight to win 7. So thinking I had a duff grub I put the disc back in and on restart chose the option to boot from installed system. To my surprise it booted win 7 up and not the linux installation. I've never had this happen before as using the linux disc to boot the installed system has always booted the linux OS. Any advice please. Or do I do a complete reinstall?

Laptop is a Dell Latitude E4300 with, it says, a Mobile Intel(R) 4 series express chipset family as the display adapter.

[austin.texas]

Is this a UEFI system, or legacy (MBR)?

The first thing I would do is boot into Windows and create a boot CD (rescue CD). That way you will always have a backup method to boot Windows, if something goes wrong.

[seeley]

Hi!
Please first try to find out where / if Grub is installed.
Copy and paste the following command into a Terminal:

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sudo fdisk -l 2>/dev/null | egrep "Disk /|/dev/" | sed "s#^/dev/#Part /dev/#" | awk '{print $2}' | sed 's/://' | xargs -n1 -IX sudo sh -c "hexdump -v -s 0x80 -n  2 -e '2/1 \"%x\" \"\\n\"' X | xargs -n1 -IY sh -c \"case  \"Y\" in '48b4') echo X: GRUB 2 v1.96 ;; 'aa75' | '5272') echo X: GRUB Legacy ;; '7c3c') echo X: GRUB 2 v1.97 oder v1.98 ;; '020') echo X: GRUB 2 v1.99 ;; *) echo X: Kein GRUB Y ;; esac\"" 

Edit:
kein Grub = no GRUB
Supposing you have BIOS!

[Bari]

Hi, thanks for the very quick response
1. I think its a MBR system as I recently put Mint 16 on it with no problems at all.
2. I can't put anything into a terminal as I can't boot the OS, would doing it from the live disc work?

[seeley]

Of course you can use the Terminal and especially the command above on your live medium.

[austin.texas]

You can boot the live DVD and run the command:
sudo parted -l
to get an idea if it is GPT partitioned

[Bari]

ok thanks, just firing up the live disc. will let you know shortly what the results are.

[Bari]

ok heres what we have got
with parted -l 1 is small primary ntfs (recovery partition for wind7)
2 is primary ntfs the main win7 os
3 is a small extended partition
there is no 4
5 is small ntfs partition I use for backups
6 is ext4 partition created for this mint install
7 is the swap partition

Runningthe finding out where grub is came up withgrub install on partition number 5. I would assume this is why it won't boot as grub needs to be on partition two along with the win7 boot.

[mr_raider]

Post the output of

Code: Select all

sudo fdisk -lu

[seeley]

Normally (if you only have Linux or a dual boot) you must install Grub into the MBR of your first hd.
Then the output looks like

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/dev/sda: GRUB 2 v1.99
...

Edit:
Your output is not very helpful; why didn't you post the originally one?

[Bari]

output of sudo fdisk -lu

Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders, total 488397168 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: 0xb4ea451e

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 206847 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 206848 243865137 121829145 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 243867646 488396799 122264577 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 243867648 292947727 24540040 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda6 292947968 475912191 91482112 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 475914240 488396799 6241280 82 Linux swap / Solaris

yes I think what went wrong was I resized the number five partition as it was the only one with enough space and it automatically put grub at the beginning of partition five instead of two. I assume I shall have ot do a reinstall and make sure it puts grub in the right place.

[Bari]

Apologies Seeley I could not get it to copy for some reason but its doing it now

sudo fdisk -l 2>/dev/null | egrep "Disk /|/dev/" | sed "s#^/dev/#Part /dev/#" | awk '{print $2}' | sed 's/://' | xargs -n1 -IX sudo sh -c "hexdump -v -s 0x80 -n 2 -e '2/1 \"%x\" \"\\n\"' X | xargs -n1 -IY sh -c \"case \"Y\" in '48b4') echo X: GRUB 2 v1.96 ;; 'aa75' | '5272') echo X: GRUB Legacy ;; '7c3c') echo X: GRUB 2 v1.97 oder v1.98 ;; '020') echo X: GRUB 2 v1.99 ;; *) echo X: no GRUB Y ;; esac\""
/dev/sda: no GRUB 9f83
/dev/sda1: no GRUB 55aa
/dev/sda2: no GRUB 55aa
/dev/sda3: no GRUB 00
/dev/sda5: GRUB 2 v1.99
/dev/sda6: no GRUB 00
/dev/sda7: no GRUB 00

[seeley]

As I mentioned, it is necessary to install Grub into the MBR (=/dev/sda), not in a parttion as /dev/sda2 or another one (PBR).

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parted -l print

gives a better overview;
the best is to attach a screenshot (Partition Manager).

[seeley]

It is clear, that you can't boot to Linux, because GRUB was not installed into the MBR.
As I mentioned, the best thing to do (for you and those who want to help), is attach a screeenshot to see if you must change your partition table.

Edit:
I don't know if GParted (Partition Manager) is installed, if not type

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gparted

and you ' ll get a hint how to install:

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The program 'gparted' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install gparted

[austin.texas]

Since this is a brand new installation, why don't you just install again, this time installing GRUB to sda, as seeley has recommended.

[Bari]

Hi Texas Yes I think that is going to be the best option. Many thanks to all for the effort in trying to resolve this.

[seeley]

Hi!
As I wrote, I recommend to attach a screenshot - it is the best option before installing again! And, if you follow my advice, you could partition your hd before starting
the installer.

[mr_raider]

Hi Texas Yes I think that is going to be the best option. Many thanks to all for the effort in trying to resolve this.

If you reinstall I suggest you backup the contents of the ntfs partition inside the extended partition, then completely destroy and recreate the extended partition. You need killmthe piece of GRUB living in sda5. You can actually create one more primary partition for windows if needed.

[Bari]

All sorted now i deleted partitions 5,6 and 7 and truned them into one ext4 partition and a swap partition then reinstalled, there were no problems and all is well now.
Again thanks to all for trying to help.

[seeley]

Why don't you mark this thread as solved?
You made a mistake and forum users showed you the right way.