Can't Start Mint 13 Mate (64-bit) After Re-installing XP
 

A few days ago I re-installed Windows XP (32-bit) and as expected, could not boot to Mint 13. As in the past, I opened the boot-repair-tool to resolve the issue. This time, however, it would not work. I just got the message "an error occurred during repair" but no explaination of the type of error. In recent days I've tried several methods to restore grub 2 but without success. Each time I have received some error message. Two that I remember were "/dev/sda2 (my Mint partition) not found in /etc/fstab" and one indicating that the partition that I was trying to restore grub to did not exist.

Just a short time ago I tried yet another method, the chroot installation method. Here are the results from that:

mint@mint ~ $ sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
mount: /dev/sda2 already mounted or /mnt busy
mount: according to mtab, /dev/sda2 is already mounted on /mnt
mint@mint ~ $ sudo chroot /mnt
mint / # sudo grub-install
grub-probe: error: cannot find a device for /boot (is /dev mounted?).
/usr/sbin/grub-install.real: 2: /etc/default/grub: Syntax error: newline unexpected
mint / #

Not quite sure what to do from here. Would appreciate any help anyone can offer.

Did you try these steps from the Mint wiki

http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/245

The boot repair should have saved a log file for you. Post that or else go get bootinfoscript and run and post the RESULTS.txt. Basically the same as the repair without attempting to fix anything - will show us what's where. These days you'll need to untar the download first.

Yes, rokytnji, I did follow the steps in the URL that you cited and I received the same error message that a number of others got, but in my case I did not get a further message that there were no errors. See my initial message above. I was still unable to boot Mint after rebooting the computer. sygOO,I have attached the Results file from the boot-repair-disk. I was a bit surprised by some of the things I saw there. Maybe I should just re-install Mint 13 again.

???? :scratch:

Oops! Sorry, I forgot to post the Results file. I hope it's here now. Posting here is a bit different than other forums that I visit.

It would have been useful to indicate that you had multiple hard drives. Your initial post indicates that you tried to mount your Mint partition at /mnt/sda2 and you received a message back that it was already mounted. You then ran chroot in /mnt rather than /mnt/sda2 where your Mint partition is (supposedly). Unless that was a typo on your part?

Your bootinfo script shows windows bootloader on the mbr of sda (sda2 is where you say you have Mint and it is a Linux partition) and you have the Grub bootloader in the mbr of sdb and indicates it looks on partition 2 for the Grub boot files. There is no sdb2? Grub is installed to the mbr of sdc and looks on the second partition for the Grub files. There is no sdc2.

What exactly do you want to do? You can chroot to sda2 and install Grub2 from Mint to the mbr of sda overwriting your xp boot files, then run os-prober and update-grub which should then include an entry for windows. Or you could do the same and install to the mbr of sdb from sda2, the Mint partition so that it points from sdb mbr to sda2. There is nothing wrong with the grub.cfg file on sda2 for Mint, then entry is correct, you just have it installed on the mbr of another drive. Have you tried booting from sdb, the 1TB drive?

You also have a number of xp and vista partitions on sda and sdb. Are most of these data partitions in addition to the OS?
Why do you have three swap partitions on sdb, only one is needed.

When you are having boot problems like this, you should always give information on home many drives, partitions and operating systems you have installed and your best guess as to where. Is there some reason why you installed Grub from Mint to a different hard drive than the one the / filesystem is on?

Having all grubs installed to the MBR on all drives. I would just use the bios to boot whatever hardrive I needed. Move sdb,sdc,sdd to the top of the list in bios and see what happens. Can't hurt.

My 2 hardrive Desktop running 4 different Linux operating systems, no Windows. /dev/sda is flagged as boot on mbr with grub legacy to boot all other linux installs (grub2) where grub 2 was installed to root instead of the mbr on sdb. Then hand made chainload entries in grub legacy to handle everyone else. One /swap partition rules them all. Just a old IBM M41 media center testing beater box.

That bootinfoscript looks to be a mess. I also thought this was only a 1 drive thread. I am surprised anything boots. Yanek and syg00 are better than me with these kinds of errors so I guess I'll back out and defer to them.