Can boot from Linux drive
 

Hello, I have 2 HDD's in my comp - one running Linux Mint 8 and the other with WinXP.

From time-to-time I keep shifting between the two, depending on which I want to boot from.

Well, yesterday I had a problem with the WinXP and wanted to re-install Windows to it.
Not realising that I had now set the Linux HDD as the drive to boot from, I ran the WinXP setup disk and reached the place where it asked me which drive I'd like to install WinXP to. This was when I stopped the installation and rebooted the machine with the Linux drive only to get an immediate message, "bootmgr is missing, press CTRL-ALT-DEL".

I booted up from an Ubuntu LiveCD and see that the Linus contents are intact.

How can I go about being able to boot from my Linux drive?

Not sure if Mint 8 uses Grub or Grub 2. Here are two links, one for each. Basically you can re-install grub, or grub 2.

Grub 2 -->https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2

Grub -->http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=224351

Hope this helps.

Thanks Camorri.

One question - would a re-installation of Linux Mint (now with the latest version) solve the problem?

I downloaded Linux Mint 12 (BTW the feel is GREAT:cool:) and made a Live USB from which i've booted my PC and can see and access my Linux Mint installation. However, I can't access the contents of my main folder in which I have some data to backup (my aim is that once I've backed up my data, I try to upgrade my Linux Mint 8 to 12) it just shows 2 files:

Access-Your-Private-Data.desktop
README.txt


If (as per what the readme says) I ecryptfs-mount-private from the command prompt, I'm told, "ERROR: Encrypted private directory is not setup properly"
If I double click on the Access-Your-Private-Data.desktop nothing happens, only that I can now set the permissions, but it doesn't do any good.

I am going to refer you to 'Google', the tutorials do a better job explaining than I can. Copy files

live cd

A re-install would fix the grub problem. I can not comment on the encrypted desktop though, since I have never encrypted files and have no experience with encryption. From what very little I understand, there should be a key file ??? for anything that is locked by encryption?

Mint 8 to Mint 12 would require an installation, not an upgrade. Just format the '/' partition, no need to format /home/.

I have not encrypted anything. It's the contents of the user a/c under the home folder.

You have me a little confused. You need to backup your data in /home/youruser/ . Is that correct?

You have a Mint12 on a USB stick you can boot the system with. Is that correct?

Usually you have to mount the partition in order to access the data. Some distros provide icons on the desktop to click on to mount partitions. I don't run Mint, I do run Ubuntu. Are there icons on the desktop to access your hard drives partitions?

If not, you will have to do it manually. You have to make a mount point, that is just an empty directory. Then issue a mount command.

It would look like this:

'mkdir /mnt/homedir'
'mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/homedir'

The commands are run as root ( or sudo ); without the quotes.

If you get no errors, them you should be able to navigate to /mnt/homedir and do an ls command, and see your directory structure. From this point you can copy your files.

Only use /dev/sda1 if that is the partition the files are on that you want to save. I am guessing that is your windows folder. If you will run the command from your live usb in terminal

sudo fdisk -l (small L)

and post the results.

corrent

correct

well, there is the Computer icon and from there I can mount/access any drive/partition, but I can't access /home/myUserAc

if I'm trying to do sudo or su, it's asking for the root password.

Most systems require root authority to add or remove things from the file system. If you still can not access the files after mounting, please copy and paste any error messages you get.

If you use your live ubuntu cd or usb live it will not ask for the password.

I made a Rescatux Bootable USB, set the BIOS to boot from it and connected my WinXP drive and set it in the BIOS to be the 2nd boot drive and the Linux Mint to be the 3rd boot drive.
So I now booted the PC with Rescatux and then again went through the GRUB restore process and IT WORKED.

I'm back again on my Linux Mint HDD. Thanks so much to everyone for your help.