That is bad news if the rescue system cannot find the drive. Can you get into the BIOS setup utility (Usually hit F1, F2, or DEL upon starting the machine). See if the drive is available to the system BIOS.

OR, you might be booting in UEFI mode when you really want legacy mode. Try hitting F12 on bootup to bring up the boot menu. Select "legacy" and see if that works. If it does, make the setting permanent with the BIOS setup utility.

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Yes, the boot list sequence shows the HD by brand name, so the computer sees it, but for some reason the mint live session doesn't. I looked all thru the bios and can't find legacy mode (maybe listed under something else?), so I'll do some more reading.

I'm thinking it might be better to start from scratch at this point and try to make sure the HD is bootable before installing mint.

QUESTION: If I just go ahead and buy a new HD to install mint on, will that likely solve my problem, or will I maybe run into this same problem again?

P.S. Also, is it possible that there's some sort of proprietary thing going on with the Lenovo computer (bought with Windows 8 on it) that could be preventing the mint install from booting??


(Recap: The mint install is on an old drive that I formatted and replaced the Win8 drive with. I used a DVD iso to install Mint Cinnamon 18.1 64 bit. Install went fine, but wont boot.)

It is possible, but unlikely, that the HD is the issue. Normally if the HD were faulty it would error on the install and you would not get success. Booting from USB or CD/DVD, mounting and chrooting into the install, and forcing grub to re-install to the MBR and re-detect (to update the conf) would be expected to fix this.

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Thanks, that definitely sounds like something to try before I ditch the HD and start from scratch.

I've got the boot from DVD part, but you completely lost me on the rest. Newbie here. I'll read up and see if I can figure it out.

Cigar!! OK, I booted the live mint DVD in compatibility mode and the HD with the mint install on it now finally shows up when I run: sudo fdisk -i in the terminal!

QUESTION: What command should I run in the terminal to try to make the HD bootable? Am I maybe almost there??

Here's the info from the fdisk readout:
Device Boot Size ID Type
/dev/sda1 * 229 Gig 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 3.9 Gig 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 3.9 Gig 82 Linux swap / Solaris

The link below gives a detailed explanation of reinstalling Grub2 in various situations. The first thing I would do is mount sda1 and check to see if there is a boot directory with various Grub files.

If this shows the boot directory and grub files, run the command below:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Gr..._Broken_System

If the above commands don't work on the computer which you want to run CSM or Legacy, you may have to post back details on what happened or try the chroot option explained at the site above.

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Cool. Good Ubuntu article. Took me a minute to figure out that you need a space between /dev/sda1 and /mnt, but I got the commands to work.

I tried: sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt And then: sudo grub-install --boot-directory=/mnt/boot /dev/sda

Got back:
grub-probe: error: failed to get canonical path of '/cow'.
Installing for i386-pc platform.
Installing finished. No error reported.

Sounds like it checked for the boot code, didn't find it, and then installed and checked the missing code? (Is this good newbie intuition?)
Anyway, thought maybe I was in business, but alas, the HD with mint installed on it still won't boot.

Error 1962: No operating system found. Boot sequence will automatically repeat.

Back to the drawring board.

Just some newbie intuition:

Apparently grub was installed successfully and all indications are that it should boot successfully now, but it still won't boot. Is it possible I didn't install grub in the right place on the drive??


[Recap: Formatted old HD and installed Mint successfully from DVD iso, but the HD won't boot. The HD is definitely listed in the boot sequence, so it's not that. I used: sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt And then: sudo grub-install --boot-directory=/mnt/boot /dev/sda, and GRUB was installed successfully. Still won't boot.]

Not sure if this is part of the problem, but I would definitely use a 64-bit version of Mint instead. You may be fighting a UEFI issue, and 32-bit doesn't do UEFI (usually, anyway). But even if you are set for legacy mode, I'd still recommend using 64-bit Mint instead unless you really have a 32-bit CPU.

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Sorry, I meant to write "64-bit". Don't know why I wrote 32-bit. So that isn't the problem, but that's a good point, thanks. You did make me double-check tho. I assume the system is UEFI (and 64-bit) since it originally had Windows 8.

Right now I'm trying to figure if it might be good to try to install grub in a different part of the HD to see if that might get it to boot.

After the:

Installing for i386-pc platform.
Installing finished. No error reported.


Then you need to run "sudo update-grub"

Actually I recommend using Parted Magic. It's got several great tools like: gparted, clonezilla, grub doctor, DoD wipe, etc, etc. It's a commercial product but wasn't always so free older versions are available on sites like MajorGeeks and others.

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Yes (UEFI) and yes (64-bit). Everyone is giving you good advice here, so I'm sure you'll get this resolved soon. But on a related note that MAY be helpful, the Linux boot utility Rescatux just released a new beta version yesterday that included some UEFI tools. Being beta, it may not be ready for primetime yet, but this could become a very useful utility because of so many people experiencing problems with UEFI systems. There is a very long (1.5 hours!) tutorial on using the new UEFI tools, but I fell asleep watching it!

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OK, I did the procedure again from the Ubuntu grub instructions, then ran: sudo update-grub

Got back: /usr/sbin/grub-probe: error: failed to get canonical path of '/cow'.

I'll look for Parted Magic. Thanks.

From my readings on this error, I apparently need to find some chroot grub-update commands that work for Mint 18.1

Thanks, stanvan. I'm a desk-bound working man outside the IT field, so an hour and a half of extra reading isn't in the cards for me I'm afraid. Linux would be a hobby for me (and I do hate Windows like everybody else, lol) so I'd love to get Mint up and running to play around with, but it's proving to be fairly time consuming, and I'm not even up and running yet. I am kind of a persistant bastard tho.

I think that message is a red-herring.

Just sayin'