Trouble with Windows 8
Hello, I have been a user of Mint Petra for a bit less than a year now. However, I'm new on this forum and community, so I'm not sure where to post this thread. Anyway, my lap-top was running just fine with mint 16, but because of some reasons (it's a really long....long story) I had to install Windows 8.1 alongside it. Now, it doesn't let me access my Mint anymore. I saw various ways to install it post windows installation, but I would kind of lose the entire partition with all the programs I've written and the book I'm working on right now. I really tried and tried, but I couldn't find a way to access the Mint next to windows. I didn't UEFI boot it, so I don't have the known option to access UEFI boot settings. If anyone knows something that could possibly help, please respond.
Comments
-
It sounds like you overwritten the grub boot loader. All you have to do it reinstall it. If you did not install windows 8.1 under UEFI then the fix should be a simple reinstallation of the grub bootloader. If you have your mint 16 install disk, insert it, boot from it, change root into the partition that has mint 16 installed:
#sudo chroot <path of mint 16 partition>
Then install grub.#sudo grub-install
Grub will be installed to the current partition. Once installation has completed, update the grub bootloader.#sudo update-grub
Then reboot your system and you should both mint and windows 8.1 listed in the grub boot menu.
These instructions should help you in more details.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/Installing0 -
Istimsak Abdulbasir wrote:It sounds like you overwritten the grub boot loader. All you have to do it reinstall it. If you did not install windows 8.1 under UEFI then the fix should be a simple reinstallation of the grub bootloader. If you have your mint 16 install disk, insert it, boot from it, change root into the partition that has mint 16 installed:
Thank you, thank you, thank you. A thousand times. It is not exactly how I got it fixed but the grub idea put me on the right track. It didn't let me chroot to the partition I was using, so it was a little bit trickier.
First I mounted the partition (X is the letter of partition, and Y would be it's number)#sudo mount /dev/sdXY /mnt
Then I installed the grub using:#sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/ /dev/sdX
That one also gave me a headache. I tried using it with partition number, but it doesn't work with it. I had to google a bit more to find out you must not use the partition number here. after which it worked. It didn't need to update, I restarted it, and the grub was there. Thank you again, the grub was the last thing on my mind, you really helped man. If we ever by some chance meet irl, the beer is on me. All of it.0 -
It was my pleasure. You are right though. Grub is normally installed in the MBR. However, it can be installed within a partition. I started doing this when I developed a habit of installing multiple linux systems on my computers. If I got tired of one I removed it. I ran into a problem of my system not booting because the bootloader of the OS that I removed was removed from the MBR as well. So, I started installing Grub in partitions. Yet, normally, you would put grub in the MBR.
You learn quick and the above commands you posted were the commands I have forgotten to add. Good job on your research. I will be looking forward for that beer ;-))
0 -
For starters, where do you keep backups? Are you making backups at all?
Always backup your /documents folder at the very, very least. I back my /documents up to two different USB flash drives, Transcend and not failware such as Sandisk. it does not help to make backups and then you do it on a device that had been proven to be extremely unreliable. I also backup my entire /home folder both to an external old hard drive salvaged from an old laptop, via USB and I also back /home up to a larger Transcend flash drive.
When I install Mint, I specify these partitions:
/boot = 1GB (512MB is good)
/ = system, allow between 10-30GB
/home = fifty percent of the remaing space
/tmp = the remaining empty space
I use Luckybackup to periodically (every four hours) to backup /home to /tmp/home so that there always is a fresh backup handy.
Critics will come armed with sticks and guns because I mentioned Luckybackup. Yes, I know it is not being maintained but it remains to be THE most user-friendly, "fool-proof" little programme out there. It has a very friendly and straightforward UI and anyone can easily use it. It is just a very friendly graphic user interface for rsync. There are others but they are not as simple and straightforward to use as Luckybackup. Especially noobs and those not using Linux as a hobby will find it to be very accommodating.
When you then run into the kind of problems you describe, salvage of "lost data" is easier than ever. I fail to understand why people generally do not make backups, why people spend $$$$$ on games and graphics cards and paraphernalia but I hardly ever see anyone forking out for a good backup regime and also a steady power supply. In my 30+ years in ICT, I can count the small business owners and career professionals who willingly invested in backup systems on ONE hand. This is to show how much trust is invested into systems that can and do fail.
Of course I backup. I have like 10 USB drives where I keep my files. Programs I could have rewritten, but man I had 214 pages of my book. And I totally forgot that I transferred it from home computer to my lap-top. Anyway, all worked up nicely, as you may read, but I bought a new USB just for my book0 -
Hugenoot, if you know of a good backup program to use, and it is related to the topic of the thread, just post a link to it.0
Categories
- 9.8K All Categories
- 26 LFX Mentorship
- 79 LFX Mentorship: Linux Kernel
- 438 Linux Foundation Boot Camps
- 260 Cloud Engineer Boot Camp
- 87 Advanced Cloud Engineer Boot Camp
- 40 DevOps Engineer Boot Camp
- 18 Cloud Native Developer Boot Camp
- Express Training Courses
- Express Courses - Discussion Forum
- 1.5K Training Courses
- 17 LFC110 Class Forum
- 3 LFC131 Class Forum
- 18 LFD102 Class Forum
- 113 LFD103 Class Forum
- 8 LFD121 Class Forum
- 59 LFD201 Class Forum
- 1 LFD213 Class Forum - Discontinued
- 128 LFD232 Class Forum
- 23 LFD254 Class Forum
- 529 LFD259 Class Forum
- 99 LFD272 Class Forum
- 1 LFD272-JP クラス フォーラム
- 1 LFS145 Class Forum
- 19 LFS200 Class Forum
- 736 LFS201 Class Forum
- 1 LFS201-JP クラス フォーラム
- LFS203 Class Forum
- 24 LFS207 Class Forum
- 292 LFS211 Class Forum
- 53 LFS216 Class Forum
- 41 LFS241 Class Forum
- 33 LFS242 Class Forum
- 31 LFS243 Class Forum
- 9 LFS244 Class Forum
- 27 LFS250 Class Forum
- 1 LFS250-JP クラス フォーラム
- 126 LFS253 Class Forum
- 923 LFS258 Class Forum
- 10 LFS258-JP クラス フォーラム
- 79 LFS260 Class Forum
- 122 LFS261 Class Forum
- 27 LFS262 Class Forum
- 77 LFS263 Class Forum
- 15 LFS264 Class Forum
- 10 LFS266 Class Forum
- 13 LFS267 Class Forum
- 16 LFS268 Class Forum
- 13 LFS269 Class Forum
- 191 LFS272 Class Forum
- 1 LFS272-JP クラス フォーラム
- 201 LFW211 Class Forum
- 147 LFW212 Class Forum
- 888 Hardware
- 211 Drivers
- 74 I/O Devices
- 44 Monitors
- 115 Multimedia
- 206 Networking
- 98 Printers & Scanners
- 85 Storage
- 744 Linux Distributions
- 88 Debian
- 64 Fedora
- 12 Linux Mint
- 13 Mageia
- 24 openSUSE
- 132 Red Hat Enterprise
- 33 Slackware
- 13 SUSE Enterprise
- 353 Ubuntu
- 466 Linux System Administration
- 37 Cloud Computing
- 66 Command Line/Scripting
- Github systems admin projects
- 94 Linux Security
- 77 Network Management
- 107 System Management
- 47 Web Management
- 59 Mobile Computing
- 21 Android
- 24 Development
- 1.2K New to Linux
- 1.1K Getting Started with Linux
- 523 Off Topic
- 126 Introductions
- 210 Small Talk
- 19 Study Material
- 781 Programming and Development
- 255 Kernel Development
- 492 Software Development
- 918 Software
- 255 Applications
- 181 Command Line
- 2 Compiling/Installing
- 75 Games
- 316 Installation
- 45 All In Program
- 45 All In Forum
Upcoming Training
-
August 20, 2018
Kubernetes Administration (LFS458)
-
August 20, 2018
Linux System Administration (LFS301)
-
August 27, 2018
Open Source Virtualization (LFS462)
-
August 27, 2018
Linux Kernel Debugging and Security (LFD440)