Anyone do a successful Windows 7/Mint 15 dual boot?

[untmdsprt]

I've had Windows 7 and Mint 14 running nicely with each other and using grub2 as the bootloader. I'm using an SSD as a boot drive and formatted it as a MBR instead of GPT. Mobo BIOS is set with secure boot turned off, and I assume EFI as well.

All hell broke loose when I tried installing Mint15. When setting the EFI bootloader "drive" as the first thing in BIOS, it would normally boot Mint without a hitch. When I'd go to load Windows, I'd get an error of invaild EFI path.

What needs to be done either to fix this, or the proper steps in getting both installed as a fresh install? Can Win7 even use the EFI and GPT?

Thanks.

[sonofadoc]

Hi untmdsprt,

I did a dual boot set up this morning and it worked fine. I did have one problem which is a weird one as after booting back into windows I couldn't connect to the internet. Anyway, that's a problem for another day.

I'm a newbie with linux so I haven't come up against your problem, but in the release notes it talks about EFI support here [url]http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_olivia.php[/url] You've probably read them already, but just in case. I thought this was a pretty good tutorial and you never know you may see something you overlooked while installing. You can see it here [url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdcH_mcWVMs[/url]. Here's another walk through tutorial on setting up dual boot in Win7 [url]http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2011/06/11/dual-boot-linux-mint-11-and-windows-7/[/url]

Hope it helps

PS. Running Samsung rf510 (phoenix) windows 7 pro 64 bit

[srs5694]

I've had Windows 7 and Mint 14 running nicely with each other and using grub2 as the bootloader. I'm using an SSD as a boot drive and formatted it as a MBR instead of GPT.

Please verify that you're using MBR and not GPT by examining your partition table. In fact, please run [url=http://sourceforge.net/projects/bootinfoscript/]Boot Info Script[/url] and post the RESULTS.txt file that is produces, either as a link or between code tags.

Mobo BIOS is set with secure boot turned off, and I assume EFI as well.

When debugging problems like this, don't assume! Verify!

All hell broke loose when I tried installing Mint15. When setting the EFI bootloader "drive" as the first thing in BIOS, it would normally boot Mint without a hitch. When I'd go to load Windows, I'd get an error of invaild EFI path.

This symptom strongly indicates that you've installed an EFI-mode version of GRUB. It could be that Windows is (or was) booting in BIOS mode, and that your previous Mint installation was as well; or it could be that you were running in EFI mode all along. The proper repair depends on which of these is the case, and the Boot Info Script output will reveal the details necessary to make a diagnosis.

What needs to be done either to fix this, or the proper steps in getting both installed as a fresh install? Can Win7 even use the EFI and GPT?

The proper repair depends on whether you should be using BIOS/MBR or EFI/GPT. Windows 7 can boot in EFI mode from a GPT disk, but if it's currently configured for BIOS/MBR booting, it's likely to be easier to get Linux booting that way than to adjust Windows.

[usbtux]

Providing you first make a recovery disk or can get hold of one and using the Master Boot Record type disk...

Safe dualbooting Windows 7 Part 1 http://youtu.be/1KM0TPFZg2Y
FULL Install Linux Mint beside Windows 7 without altering the MBR. For safe dualboot and easy removal. Part 1 Preinstall and install of Mint.

Safe dualbooting Windows 7 Part 2 http://youtu.be/V23DzYI3iTI - Get it working