Dual boot resulting in going directly to Mint on startup

[JoelWH]

Ok people -- the newest of newbies here. Be gentle :)

Sony VAIO laptop came with Windows 7 installed & I later upgraded to Windows 10. Installed Linux 19.1 Cinnamon 64 bit with the intention of keeping windows and having a dual boot laptop, at least to start.

After what I thought was a successful installation, booting goes directly to Mint without offering any options.

Did a lot of research and thought secure boot was the culprit but after going into InsydeH2O Setup Utility REV 3.5 to examine the boot settings, there is no setting for secure boot. I now believe Windows 7 is legacy bios and therefore is pre-secure boot?

I ran boot-repair-disk and that solved nothing.

BIOS version is R0200Z29
Intel© Core™ i5-2410M CPU @ 2.30GHz × 2

Not sure what to do next. Sorry if this issue has already been addressed.

[philotux]

This might help. Once booted into Mint, open a terminal and run:

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sudo update-grub

When it's done, reboot and hopefully you'll get the Grub boot menu.

[JoelWH]

Thank you for the suggestion. Unfortunately it still boots directly to Mint :/

[MrEen]

Hi JoelWH, and welcome to the forum.

Please post the output of running cat /etc/default/grub in the terminal.

When pasting large blocks of text, please enclose the results in-between [ⅽode] and [/ⅽode] code markers by selecting </> from the mini toolbar above the textbox where you type your reply.

Thanks.

[JoelWH]

Here is the result:

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# If you change this file, run 'update-grub' afterwards to update
# /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
# For full documentation of the options in this file, see:
#   info -f grub -n 'Simple configuration'

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=hidden
GRUB_TIMEOUT=10
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

# Uncomment to enable BadRAM filtering, modify to suit your needs
# This works with Linux (no patch required) and with any kernel that obtains
# the memory map information from GRUB (GNU Mach, kernel of FreeBSD ...)
#GRUB_BADRAM="0x01234567,0xfefefefe,0x89abcdef,0xefefefef"

# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only)
#GRUB_TERMINAL=console

# The resolution used on graphical terminal
# note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE
# you can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo'
#GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480

# Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true

# Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries
#GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"

# Uncomment to get a beep at grub start
#GRUB_INIT_TUNE="480 440 1"

[MrEen]

In the terminal, type xed admin:///etc/default/grub and when the file opens, change GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=hidden to GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=menu then save the file and run sudo update-grub in the terminal again.

That should give you the menu when you boot up.

[JoelWH]

Thank you so much. I will give that a try.

[pbear]

... please enclose the results in-between [ⅽode] and [/ⅽode] code markers ...

Aside: How do you do that? Looks like you're subbing in "c" from another character set, but I can't figure out which one.

[JoelWH]

I gave that a try and now when I boot I get a screen giving me the option to go into Mint Advanced Options. The screen shows for a few seconds and then it proceeds to launch into Mint proper.

[MrEen]

I gave that a try and now when I boot I get a screen giving me the option to go into Mint Advanced Options. The screen shows for a few seconds and then it proceeds to launch into Mint proper.

Just a guess here, but maybe Windows is installed in Legacy mode and Mint in UEFI, or vice versa. Have to wait for others to assist at this point. The only thing you could try that I'm aware of is run sudo os-prober in the terminal and see if it detects your Windows installation.

... please enclose the results in-between [ⅽode] and [/ⅽode] code markers ...

Aside: How do you do that? Looks like you're subbing in "c" from another character set, but I can't figure out which one.

If you mean this there's a little c button right before the rimg button.

[pbear]

Never mind. I don't want to sidetrack the thread.

[JoelWH]

Ok I will try that. I'm pretty sure Windows is in legacy mode. I will post results of your suggestion. Thanks!

[JoelWH]

I ran os-prober and nothing appeared to happen.

Wondering if the next step is trying windows rescue disk and starting over. As I said in my opening post, this laptop came with Windows 7 and then I updated to Windows 10.

Would I use a Windows 10 recovery disk or 7?

Any other ideas are most welcome.

Thanks,

Joel

[MrEen]

I ran os-prober and nothing appeared to happen.

Okay. Please wait for others to help. I do not have experience with your issue. I don't want you to accidentally lose any data.

One thing I think will help others help you is seeing the output of sudo parted -l

[Flemur]

I gave that a try and now when I boot I get a screen giving me the option to go into Mint Advanced Options. The screen shows for a few seconds and then it proceeds to launch into Mint proper.

Grub is very primitive. Touch an arrow button (on keyboard) as soon as you see the menu and it'll stay up. Also look up how to make the menu show up during boot for your computer (something like an F-key, ESC, etc).

[philotux]

Another thing I would try is going into BIOS and as the boot option choose Windows Boot Manager to boot from to see if it really does boot up or is it in fact something wrong with Windows Boot Manager.

[rickNS]

Is it possible you wiped out your win10 with the mint install ?
Do you recall if you did; 1, use whole disk, 2, install along side, or 3, something else.

If not sure open the disks tool to verify that you do still have a windows partition.

[JoelWH]

Thanks, Mr. Een. Here is the result from the sudo parted -l comand:

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Model: ATA ST9500325AS (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    Type      File system  Flags
 1      1048kB  40.0GB  40.0GB  extended               boot
 5      1049kB  40.0GB  40.0GB  logical   ext4


Model: Linux device-mapper (crypt) (dm)
Disk /dev/mapper/cryptswap1: 1850MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: loop
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start  End     Size    File system     Flags
 1      0.00B  1850MB  1850MB  linux-swap(v1)

[JoelWH]

Thank you Flemur for your suggestions.

The only menu I see when booting is the advanced mint options. Nothing about windows.

I can press F2 while booting and that takes me to the bios menu but there is nothing I can see regarding windows.

I don't know how to tell if Windows is even there since os-prober did not return any result.

Would screenshots be of any help???

[JoelWH]

Philotux, I don’t know how to access the windows boot manager.

RickNS: I chose option 3, something else with the install.