[SOLVED] How To Avoid Problem of Access to Mint After Installing Windows XP
Linux - SoftwareThis forum is for Software issues.
Having a problem installing a new program? Want to know which application is best for the job? Post your question in this forum.
Notices
Welcome to LinuxQuestions.org, a friendly and active Linux Community.
You are currently viewing LQ as a guest. By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics, receive our newsletter, use the advanced search, subscribe to threads and access many other special features. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today!
Note that registered members see fewer ads, and ContentLink is completely disabled once you log in.
If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us. If you need to reset your password, click here.
Having a problem logging in? Please visit this page to clear all LQ-related cookies.
Get a virtual cloud desktop with the Linux distro that you want in less than five minutes with Shells! With over 10 pre-installed distros to choose from, the worry-free installation life is here! Whether you are a digital nomad or just looking for flexibility, Shells can put your Linux machine on the device that you want to use.
Exclusive for LQ members, get up to 45% off per month. Click here for more info.
[SOLVED] How To Avoid Problem of Access to Mint After Installing Windows XP
Currently running Mint 11 and dual booting with Windows XP. Planning to upgrade to Mint 13 soon and I'm hoping to avoid the usual problem of not being able to access Mint after installing Windows XP or having problems logging into XP because of some change in the Mint boot. I'm thinking there must be a way to install Mint 13 to avoid this problem. What about putting the two systems on separate hard drives and giving Mint a separate boot partition (/boot). Would that help? I'm just tired of dealing with this issue. The last time I installed XP, I wasn't able to boot either OS for several days. I don't want a repeat of that when I install Mint 13. Any suggestions will be appreciated.
Last edited by AllenRM; 09-13-2012 at 01:41 PM.
Reason: To indicate solution to problem
I'm not sure what you mean by "avoid the usual problem" because the vast majority of people do not have this problem. I'm sure it is probably something simple that we can help you with if you give more details. Do you currently have a working Mint/XP dual boot?
Thanks for your response Snowpine. I guess I must be unusual then because I've had the problem of loosing access to Mint (or Ubuntu) every time I've installed Windows XP. But I have always been able to type a few commands in a terminal and restore access to Ubuntu or Mint. So when I re-installed XP yesterday I didn't expect any serious problem. I knew what I had done in the past so I booted from a live DVD, opened a terminal and typed the following code:
sudo fdisk -l (which showed that my Linix partition was sda2)
sudo mkdir /media/sda2
sudo mount /dev/sda2 /media/sda2
sudo grub-install --root-directory=/media/sda2 /dev/sda
I then removed the live DVD, closed the tray and hit Enter and instead of booting to Mint as in the past, I got a screen with the following information with a grub prompt at the end:
Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB lists
possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists possible device or file
completion.
Later the same day I tried typing in the above commands again after restarting the computer. This time after the last command I got an error message: grub probe: error:cannot find a device for / (Is /dev mounted?) However, right after that I got the
following: Installation finished. No error reported. I rebooted the computer and got the same screen with the grub prompt at the end. Oh, and I can't boot Windows XP either.
So I'm not exactly a happy camper. That's the reason for my interest in finding some way around this business.
Apologies for misreading your original post. You are correct that the Windows installer is not "smart enough" to detect your Mint system and create a working dual-boot. Most users prefer to install Windows first, and then Linux, for this very reason. You are on the right track installing GRUB from the Live CD, and hopefully a Mint user will be along shortly to help you with the details.
Try going to the site below when booted to your Mint Live CD and reading the instructions on using the bootinfoscript, download and run it. It will give you a lot of info on drives/partitions and boot files and you should be able to resolve it. If not, post the results.txt file you get after running bootinfoscript and someone should be able to help.
Yancek thanks for your response. I'm familiar with the bootinfo script and have used it in the past. However, in this case the problem has already been solved by a great little program called Boot-Repair-Disk which I learned about last night. I highly recommend this software to anyone having Linux boot problems, especially with a dual-boot with Windows. In two clicks, literally, the program fixed the boot problem and now both Mint 11 and Windows XP are working perfectly. To get the program's repository added to your sources and then installed on your system (even if you're running a live CD/DVD)requires only two lines of code entered in a terminal. Anyone interested can go here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair
LinuxQuestions.org is looking for people interested in writing
Editorials, Articles, Reviews, and more. If you'd like to contribute
content, let us know.