How do I drop 1 LinuxMint12 without dropping Grub?

Sharpdrop · 05-12-2012, 10:08 PM

I had to replace my Inspiron 1501 HDD. Somewhere between reinstalling the original Vista and the re-doing the Upgrade to 7 I lost Grub. Well, I thought I would just re-re-install LinuxMint12 over itself and reinstall grub in the process. Well, I wound up with 2 installs of LM12,and they are very slow and prone to crashing now. How do I drop one, clear up the apparent resource crunch and not lose Grub in the process?
Thanks!

djsoundfx · 05-12-2012, 10:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sharpdrop

I had to replace my Inspiron 1501 HDD. Somewhere between reinstalling the original Vista and the re-doing the Upgrade to 7 I lost Grub. Well, I thought I would just re-re-install LinuxMint12 over itself and reinstall grub in the process. Well, I wound up with 2 installs of LM12,and they are very slow and prone to crashing now. How do I drop one, clear up the apparent resource crunch and not lose Grub in the process?
Thanks!

Not exactly sure what you're describing here. Can you give us the output of /etc/grub.conf and or /boot/grub/grub.conf? Maybe even boot off a live cd and give the output of
http://bootinfoscript.sourceforge.net/ [instructions are on the site for this tool].

jtarin · 05-13-2012, 06:33 AM

I'm assuming you have one drive partioned? If you have Grub installed to the MBR of that drive you will not lose it unless you reinstall Windows. You could do wipe both Linux installs and do a clean reinstall to the correct partion and correct your botched Linux installs.

yancek · 05-13-2012, 10:39 AM

What you needed to do was reinstall Grub not reinstall Mint but it's too late now. Running the bootinfoscript and posting the results.txt file here would be the best suggestion. That will provide partition and boot file information which should help someone to help you.

Sharpdrop · 05-13-2012, 10:30 PM

Thanks to both of you! I will run those ASAP and post!

Sharpdrop · 05-13-2012, 10:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by yancek

What you needed to do was reinstall Grub not reinstall Mint but it's too late now.

For future reference, how does one reinstall Grub and not the OS? On my Linux Mint 12 ISO I didn't find a repair option, so any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks

jtarin · 05-14-2012, 01:04 AM

Reinstalling GRUB 2 from LiveCD using ChRoot method
This will work with any Live Linux CD. Your Mint is Ubuntu based.

yancek · 05-14-2012, 09:41 AM

Quote:

how does one reinstall Grub and not the OS?

Read and bookmark the link below:

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

Sharpdrop · 06-08-2012, 11:56 AM

Sorry about being absent so long from this thread, lots of personal issues that I won't bore you with. I couldn't get Mint to run well enough to run any reports so I finally ended up using The Dark One's Disk Management software to wipe the two Mint installs out and reset the partitions where I wanted them. Then did a fresh install and voila! Thanks to everyone for all the help!