Linux Mint 17 Cinnamon not detecting Windows 7 during boot up
 

Hello everyone,
Recently, I installed Linux Mint 17 (Cinnamon) on my HP dv6 Laptop. During installation Linux was not detecting my original Windows 7 and was attempting to occupy the entire hard disk. So I used the "Something Else" option to manually create separate partitions for Linux (Previously I had allocated around 120 GB free space for Linux using Windows Disk Management). This installed the Linux but after booting it does not detect Windows 7 and directly boots to Mint. I have tried installing and updating the grub but it did not help either.
Please Help...

Hi...

Welcome to the Forum :)

Ouch! Apparently, you're not the only one who's had this problem. Does this thread help? :)

Regards...

In such situations it's important to not jump to conclusions and not panic. So first things first.
Make sure that you understand exactly what happened before taking any actions.
Questions to ask yourself:
Was there any data on the drive / Windows partition that I care about?
If so, do I have a recent backup?

If the answers to the above question are yes and no, respectively, be very careful from now on. Anything you do might override precious data.

Ideally boot a live system for further inspection. Analyse the partition layout on your system using e.g. gparted. Is the Windows partition still there? Does it still have a windows typical format (such as e.g. ntfs)? If that is the case, you probably did not lose anything important. You can mount the windows partition and backup your data.

If the windows partition is gone it will be a lot more difficult to recover any data. You'll have to make a decision whether you want to try restoring some of the data, but it won't be straight forward, and some data will definitely be lost.

Long story short: A lot more information is needed before good advice can be given.

Posting more details on your system which you can get by booting the Mint installation medium and going to the site below, downloading and running the bootinfoscript. Instructions in the link in the Description box;

http://sourceforge.net/projects/bootinfoscript/

This will output a results.txt file which you can post here. Better to run from the installation media in case some files were overwritten in windows. The file will show details on boot files, drives/partitions and other relevant info.

Saved From Dual Boot Disaster by Mint & Ghost
 

I too have had disaster with Linux Mint 17.1 dual boot. I really liked the OS when I booted my CD and played around with FireFox. It was running extremely well from the install CD so I decided to install it in dual boot mode so that I could give it a test run and see if I could find acceptable alternatives in software. Well that is where my nightmare began. Everything looked like it was going fine. I let the installer choose partition sizes and all but when I finished the install and rebooted my computer, it locked up in the boot grub menu and would not go anywhere. Well, I said to myself, no problem, I have just made a disk image with Ghost before attempting such a risky ordeal, so I will just image my system back to where it was, right? Wrong, the image did not remove the Linux partitions or the Grub so I was right back to where I started from. I tried searching for solutions on the web since I could still do that by booting to the install CD and using FireFox. Well the solutions were aplenty and far over my head for a beginner. I could not even understand the syntax. Well after many failed attempts I decided to turn it over to the Angels for the night. In the morning I gave it another try. I booted to the install CD and chose the "other" option for the Linux partitioning. I noticed that the partitions that were created were C: and E: which seemed strange because my boot drive was H: and my second partition was D: where I kept my Ghost images. They seemed like they were still intact so I deleted the Linux partitions from the "other" menu in Mint. Next I booted up my Ghost CD with WinPE and dropped to DOS. I used GDisk32 to delete the empty Linux partitions which we showing in Mint to be free unallocated space. My H: and D: partitions were 1 and 5 so I deleted the Linux partitions C: and E: with GDisk32. Next I rebooted Ghost and found my .gho image, did a partition from image restore and WOW, I am back to Windows and all my stuff is intact. Hope this helps someone in trouble as it was a blessing to me. I will use and old PC next time to test Linux and stay away from Dual Boot. I am a happy camper now!

I tried doing all those things.I ran sudo os-prober and then sudo update-grub. However it doesnot help

I have all my data backed up. Linux Mint is also recognising the Windows partitions as NTFS file system. I can even access my data from Mint itself as the NTFS partition is mounted.

I have uploaded the Results file generated by bootinfoscript

Under the drive/partition information from the bootinfoscript, you show your windows partitions as SFS which is dynamic disks. Unless something has changed very recently, you won't be able to boot a windows with SFS partitions. You might be able to convert the dynamic disks but after doing a complete backup. Or you could install Ubuntu on a flash drive. You will probably need to reinstall the windows bootloader from the windows installation media.

The problem with that is one of my recovery disk is broken.

Hi...

I think Yancek is referring to a standard Windows CD/DVD, not a recovery CD, which I don't think would work in this case. :(

An option would be to purchase a full retail copy of Windows 7, like the one here or here, or whichever version of Windows 7 yours is. ;)

Regards...

Problem Solved With Mint CD and Gdisk
 

I am not sure that you all can understand just what I did to restore my Windows XP back from a dual boot Linux installation but I will try to help you all once more. Please tell me you have an image of your drive or boot partition before you got into this situation or this may not work.

I first tried to restore my drive back with my Ghost image but that made no difference at all since the MBR still had Linux in it.

The only way my machine would boot was from the Mint install CD otherwise it would lock up at the boot grub menu. Linux ran fine from the CD and I could go to the Internet with FireFox so I did some searching for solutions. Most of them were no good for a Linux beginner like me. Well that is where my nightmare began. I did not understand any of the command line syntax and thought I would have to get a new hard drive to restore my system. That was not a good option since I only imaged my boot partition and all of my personal archives were on the other partition.

Finally, after some prayer and a good night sleep, I booted the Mint install CD one more time and chose the "other" option for the Linux partitioning.

I noticed that the partitions that were created were C: and E: which seemed strange because my boot drive was H: and my second partition was D: where I kept my Ghost images.

They seemed like they were still intact so I deleted the Linux partitions from the "other" menu in Mint.

Next I booted up my Ghost CD with WinPE and dropped to DOS. GDisk32 was still showing that there were 2 Linux partitions I used GDisk32 to restore the MBR and delete the empty Linux partitions which were showing in Mint to be free unallocated space.

My othere partitions were shown as NTFS so I deleted the Linux partitions with GDisk32.

Next I rebooted with WinPE and Ghost and found my .gho image, did a partition from image restore and WOW, I am back to Windows and all my stuff is intact.

The only damage was that I had some free space on the drive where Linux once was.

Next I got a free copy of EaseUS partition manager from download.com and installed it.

Well now this could also be a problem since the installer contains OpenCandy. I had a good
AV program so I was able to get around installing OpenCandy but you can do this very easily by running the installer from the CMD prompt with the switch /NOCANDY but first just to be absolutely safe you should disable your Internet connection.

Now you can merge your empty partition into your disk with no data loss and recover the space. Check youtube for easy instructions.

This time I will install Mint in a "virtual machine" under Windows until I know more about what I am doing. If you want to do this yourself just get a copy of Virtual Box by SUN from the link in the Ubuntu documentation page. That page also goes through all the steps in setting up your "virtual machine".

I would post urls for all of the things I did but I do not know if it is permitted. You can also do a search for Virtual Box.

Hope this helps someone else in trouble as it was a blessing to me. I highly suggest to install Virtual Box to test Linux and stay away from Dual Boot. I am a happy camper now!