OK, here's my story.



I have Windows Vista SP1 installed on my HP G-series notebook. I decided to dual-boot it with Linux Mint, just to try it out. Unfortunetely, there were some graphic errors (or so it seemed) and I was never able to use it beyond the LiveCD. Obviously after I was tired of researching the internet looking for solutions I decided to get rid of it.


So I went into Computer>Management and deleted my Mint partition (Healthy Primary 2.33 GB) yeah I know it's small, that's probably what was causing the problems.

Fearing for GRUB errors I decided not to delete this other partition which was 77 MB cause I thought maybe that was the GRUB.

Sure enough, I started it up and there it was GRUB error 17. After this I spent hours on the phone with HP support which didn't offer me anything. So I booted up my Windows recovery disk (I don't have the installation disk because it came pre-installed with the laptop) and it just took forever to load the files then came up with something trying to identify my hard drive. I waited and waited but after a while I just turned it off.

Fortunetely I did manage to boot up the Mint LiveCD. So my question is, given this exact situation how can I repair the GRUB from the Linux Mint CD without formatting.

Thank you.

Grub error 17 means you messed up the partition table order or you deleted the boot grub folder.

So you need to install grub again. The best is to get a live cd and reinstall the grub.
Reinstalling means you should know the partition numbers (or new partitions number if they changed)

Or if you want to keep only windows, boot the windows from CD go to recovery console and there run fdisk /mbr (If I remember well)


Regards

To FIX VISTA MBR: Boot up from Vista Installation DVD and select Repair Your Computer option (its below Install Icon). Select Windows Vista -- Command Prompt.
Execute this at command prompt:
Code:
bootrec.exe /fixmbr
bootrec.exe /fixboot

You only have the Recovery CD? Then it won't work. Try downloading EasyBCD from this site to do it:

http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

Before trying anything with EasyBCD, read the instructions on this page:

http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBC...r+with+EasyBCD

Never used vista so I've never used EasyBCD but have read about a number of users who have had success with it.

Grub Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition
This error is returned if the partition requested exists, but the filesystem type cannot be recognized by GRUB

Grub doesn't mount or recognize ntfs partitions. You can use your Mint CD to restore Grub but if you deleted the partition with Mint on it, most of the Grub boot files were on that partition. Assume you were booting with Grub previously? Open a terminal after loading the Mint CD and run the command: sudo su fdisk -l (lower case Letter L) and post output here.

I got "Unknown id: fdisk"


EDIT: I apologize, I typed both the commands on the same line lol silly me.

Anyway here you go

Disk /dev/sda: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x918990b4

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 37161 298495701 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 37162 37487 2618595 5 Extended
/dev/sda3 37488 38913 11451392 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda5 37466 37487 176683+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
mint mint #

Your Mint partition is gone, the only Linux partition is sda5 which is a swap partition so you will need to either re-install Mint or another Linux distro you like. You will need to create partitions during the installation (or before) except for swap.

If you want to be able to boot vista, I would suggest the EasyBCD route as the commands I listed above will not work with the vista Recovery CD, only the full Installation CD.

OK, So I have 284.7 GB reserved for my vista partition how much should I free up for mint?

Guess it depends upon what you expect/want from it. I'd say 5-10GB or more if you think you will be using it a lot and creating documents, pictures, music, etc... It's pretty much a personal choice and you can change it later. 5GB would probably be a minimal although you could install on less.

Ok, I tried it again (using 13 GB) and it said the installation failed and it might be due to a faulty CD/DVD or a faulty hard disk.

Have you used the disk successfully before? Is your CD/DVD player working with other disks? You did burn it as an image, at a low speed?