I actually do have another question now that I've installed it. Is there a good (easy) way to actually boot into another OS? Instead of going into bios and selecting the boot menu and all that.
It should have installed GRUB as the boot loader when you installed mint, which would allow you to switch on boot. Try running the 'os-prober' and then 'update-grub' (you'll need to use sudo to run those two) and then reboot the system. If it worked correctly, then you should boot to having Windows 7 and Linux Mint show up as boot options when you boot the computer.
Try sudo gedit /boot/grub/grub.cfg in the terminal (if you don't have gedit 'sudo apt-get install gedit'). put it into a pastebin document, I want to see if there's an entry for Windows in that file.
Edit: added 'sudo' to the beginning of the gedit command. Be sure not to make changes to that file.
Try 'sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg' and then post up the new results from 'sudo gedit /boot/grub/grub.cfg'. Hopefully that will add the menu entry.
Ah crap. I'm super sorry for the late reply. Ended up getting really busy after class. I'd like to apologize profusely for that man. I think I do have the solution to fix the problem though, whenever you're ready.
No need to apologize. It's not like I'm paying you for tech support, your just helping me out for however long your able. And that's fine. I thank you for that.
Drats, was hoping it might be that simple. Okay, can you run 'sudo fdisk -l >> blk.txt && gedit blk.txt' and post the results of that? I need to see what your partition scheme is so we can hopefully add a custom entry ourselves.
It throws this out when I use 'sudo fdisk -l >> blk.txt && gedit blk.txt'
"WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.
WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sdb'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.
(gedit:3346): Gtk-WARNING **: Attempting to read the recently used resources file at `/home/saltystew/.local/share/recently-used.xbel', but the parser failed: Failed to open file '/home/saltystew/.local/share/recently-used.xbel': Permission denied."
I'm pretty sure I got the information I needed, but to be sure first run 'rm blk.txt' in the same directory as you ran the previous command. Then run 'sudo parted -l >> blk.txt'. And posts the results. I also have a question. Which of the first two drives is Windows on? The 240 GB or 250 GB? Oh, and you didn't actually fuck up :) it's just that fdisk doesn't really like or work with GPT partitions.
If 'sudo fdisk -l >> rm blk.txt' is the current thing to run first, was something supposed to happen? Besides it asking for my password. Nothing happened after I ran 'sudo parted -l >> blk.txt' either
Windows is installed on it's own partition in the 250GB drive.
Sorry, should have specified better. 'rm blk.txt' should have been ran on it's own, to delete the original version of blk.txt. Then you do 'sudo parted -l >> blk.txt' to create a new file called blk.txt and send the output of parted -l to it. Then you'll run gedit blk.txt and put the contents of that in a pastebin and post them. I'm going to type up the custom menu entry for your grub menu, just a second.
So I think I did it. I've been sitting here for 25 minutes wondering why nothings coming up. It put it on my desktop, not sure if that was supposed to happen. And it appears to have less stuff inside.
Yep, that had what I needed. Now you're going to want to do 'sudo gedit /etc/grub.d/40_custom' and add the following to the end of the file. After that, save your changes and close gedit. Then run 'sudo update-grub' or 'sudo update-grub2' and reboot your computer. Hopefully that should give you the option for windows 7.
Speedy edit: if that doesn't work, try changing 'msdos4' in the pastebin i sent you to 'msdos3'. Then continue the steps as usual.
Edited the file. Ran the command to update-grub. Got this.
Restarted the computer, it booted into windows without any prompt or question about OS, and then i booted into Linux via BIOS and it booted into Linux without a prompt or question about OS.
I also tried the the other edit, changing the number 4 to 3 didn't do anything.
What is this supposed to look like anyway? Am I supposed to get a prompt when I get past the BIOS screen and start loading into either windows or linux or is it if I'm booting into linux already. I doubt I'm missing it but it'd be nice to know what I'm looking for.
And thank you for helping me with this so far, I honestly thought it would be a simple question lol.
This is what you're looking to get. Have you gotten a menu like that at any point when you turn the system on?
Edit: go ahead and do 'sudo gedit /etc/grub.d/40_custom' and remove the entry I gave you and rerun update-grub. I think I may need to retry the syntax for it.
Nothing. If I restart my computer and don't touch anything it boots right into windows. BIOS splash screen>windows logo.
If I restart the computer and go into BIOS and manually select my hard drive to be what I boot into then it goes from the BIOS screen to a black screen for a few seconds and then there's some green dots indicating that its loading I guess and then I'm on my desktop in Linux.
Yeah that's what I've been saying these last few times. It boots into windows as if windows is the only OS installed. And I can only boot into Linux if I force it to boot into my other HDD in BIOS.
So is it not possible for me to boot through grub with the way it's installed?
Have you ever installed Linux manually before? Creating each partition yourself? If so, how many partitions was there supposed to be?
Because I think I only made three. Root, home, and swap. But I found another guide that also has a boot partition, which was never talked about in the guide I read. Which means I did not make a boot partition manually, if that makes any difference.
Edit: rereading the guide I used, I may have missed a part. I can't remember if I changed that drop down menu thing.
"8. You can now review the partitions you created before you continue with the installation. Also, you have the option here to select where to install the boot loader. The default is fine if you have no other operating system installed or if you want Linux Mint to ask you at boot time which operating system to boot.
If you want another operating system to ask you at boot time which operating system to boot, then change the device for boot loader installation to your root partition (/dev/sda1 in this example). Note that without additional software, Windows isn't able to ask you which operating system to boot."
So yeah, it's my fault. Do I have to reinstall or can that be changed with the terminal?
I have installed it manually, currently running arch. The number of partitions doesn't actually matter, you can have as few as just one root partition, or a partition for root, home, boot, swap, etc etc. You may be able to change it with the terminal by installing grub to your boot partition, but it may be better to reinstall and let the installer handle it for you.
Alright, thanks for the info. Better safe than sorry.
No problem, glad I could help. :)
I actually do have another question now that I've installed it. Is there a good (easy) way to actually boot into another OS? Instead of going into bios and selecting the boot menu and all that.
It should have installed GRUB as the boot loader when you installed mint, which would allow you to switch on boot. Try running the 'os-prober' and then 'update-grub' (you'll need to use sudo to run those two) and then reboot the system. If it worked correctly, then you should boot to having Windows 7 and Linux Mint show up as boot options when you boot the computer.
After fixing my crashing problem I tried sudo os-prober and it returned this "No volume groups found."
Does it say that because there's only one OS on this HDD? My windows 7 installation is on a SSD if you remember.
So you can currently boot in Linux Mint or Windows 7 by going into the BIOS and changing the boot, right?
Yeah
Try sudo gedit /boot/grub/grub.cfg in the terminal (if you don't have gedit 'sudo apt-get install gedit'). put it into a pastebin document, I want to see if there's an entry for Windows in that file.
Edit: added 'sudo' to the beginning of the gedit command. Be sure not to make changes to that file.
It worked with just sudo gedit /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Try 'sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg' and then post up the new results from 'sudo gedit /boot/grub/grub.cfg'. Hopefully that will add the menu entry.
Here
Ah crap. I'm super sorry for the late reply. Ended up getting really busy after class. I'd like to apologize profusely for that man. I think I do have the solution to fix the problem though, whenever you're ready.
No need to apologize. It's not like I'm paying you for tech support, your just helping me out for however long your able. And that's fine. I thank you for that.
And I'm ready whenever you are.
Alright, so first can you run 'sudo fdisk -l' and post the output of that?
Also, a quick question. When you installed mint, did you select "install alongisde Windows 7"? was that an option?
No, it wasn't an option. I chose "something else"
The top default option was something like 'format drive and install'
hm. well that actually could be the issue as to why grub didn't automatically add Windows. Really quickly, try 'sudo update-grub' and reboot?
I'm guessing that was supposed to fix the issue and ask me upon boot what OS I wanted to boot into? If so, it sadly did not do that.
Drats, was hoping it might be that simple. Okay, can you run 'sudo fdisk -l >> blk.txt && gedit blk.txt' and post the results of that? I need to see what your partition scheme is so we can hopefully add a custom entry ourselves.
Yeah I think I fucked up.
It throws this out when I use 'sudo fdisk -l >> blk.txt && gedit blk.txt'
"WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.
WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sdb'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.
(gedit:3346): Gtk-WARNING **: Attempting to read the recently used resources file at `/home/saltystew/.local/share/recently-used.xbel', but the parser failed: Failed to open file '/home/saltystew/.local/share/recently-used.xbel': Permission denied."
Here's the file it opened.
I'm pretty sure I got the information I needed, but to be sure first run 'rm blk.txt' in the same directory as you ran the previous command. Then run 'sudo parted -l >> blk.txt'. And posts the results. I also have a question. Which of the first two drives is Windows on? The 240 GB or 250 GB? Oh, and you didn't actually fuck up :) it's just that fdisk doesn't really like or work with GPT partitions.
If 'sudo fdisk -l >> rm blk.txt' is the current thing to run first, was something supposed to happen? Besides it asking for my password. Nothing happened after I ran 'sudo parted -l >> blk.txt' either
Windows is installed on it's own partition in the 250GB drive.
Sorry, should have specified better. 'rm blk.txt' should have been ran on it's own, to delete the original version of blk.txt. Then you do 'sudo parted -l >> blk.txt' to create a new file called blk.txt and send the output of parted -l to it. Then you'll run gedit blk.txt and put the contents of that in a pastebin and post them. I'm going to type up the custom menu entry for your grub menu, just a second.
So I think I did it. I've been sitting here for 25 minutes wondering why nothings coming up. It put it on my desktop, not sure if that was supposed to happen. And it appears to have less stuff inside.
Yep, that had what I needed. Now you're going to want to do 'sudo gedit /etc/grub.d/40_custom' and add the following to the end of the file. After that, save your changes and close gedit. Then run 'sudo update-grub' or 'sudo update-grub2' and reboot your computer. Hopefully that should give you the option for windows 7.
Speedy edit: if that doesn't work, try changing 'msdos4' in the pastebin i sent you to 'msdos3'. Then continue the steps as usual.
Edited the file. Ran the command to update-grub. Got this.
Restarted the computer, it booted into windows without any prompt or question about OS, and then i booted into Linux via BIOS and it booted into Linux without a prompt or question about OS.
I also tried the the other edit, changing the number 4 to 3 didn't do anything.
What is this supposed to look like anyway? Am I supposed to get a prompt when I get past the BIOS screen and start loading into either windows or linux or is it if I'm booting into linux already. I doubt I'm missing it but it'd be nice to know what I'm looking for.
And thank you for helping me with this so far, I honestly thought it would be a simple question lol.
This is what you're looking to get. Have you gotten a menu like that at any point when you turn the system on?
Edit: go ahead and do 'sudo gedit /etc/grub.d/40_custom' and remove the entry I gave you and rerun update-grub. I think I may need to retry the syntax for it.
No, I've definitely never seen that menu.
And not even one similar, asking what you want to launch?
Nothing. If I restart my computer and don't touch anything it boots right into windows. BIOS splash screen>windows logo.
If I restart the computer and go into BIOS and manually select my hard drive to be what I boot into then it goes from the BIOS screen to a black screen for a few seconds and then there's some green dots indicating that its loading I guess and then I'm on my desktop in Linux.
Well, crap. So that means you're never seeing grub. Guessing it's still using Windows to boot the system then, instead of grub.
Yeah that's what I've been saying these last few times. It boots into windows as if windows is the only OS installed. And I can only boot into Linux if I force it to boot into my other HDD in BIOS.
So is it not possible for me to boot through grub with the way it's installed?
It should be, but it seems like grub isn't being called on boot for some reason.
Have you ever installed Linux manually before? Creating each partition yourself? If so, how many partitions was there supposed to be?
Because I think I only made three. Root, home, and swap. But I found another guide that also has a boot partition, which was never talked about in the guide I read. Which means I did not make a boot partition manually, if that makes any difference.
Edit: rereading the guide I used, I may have missed a part. I can't remember if I changed that drop down menu thing.
"8. You can now review the partitions you created before you continue with the installation. Also, you have the option here to select where to install the boot loader. The default is fine if you have no other operating system installed or if you want Linux Mint to ask you at boot time which operating system to boot.
If you want another operating system to ask you at boot time which operating system to boot, then change the device for boot loader installation to your root partition (/dev/sda1 in this example). Note that without additional software, Windows isn't able to ask you which operating system to boot."
So yeah, it's my fault. Do I have to reinstall or can that be changed with the terminal?
I have installed it manually, currently running arch. The number of partitions doesn't actually matter, you can have as few as just one root partition, or a partition for root, home, boot, swap, etc etc. You may be able to change it with the terminal by installing grub to your boot partition, but it may be better to reinstall and let the installer handle it for you.
Alright then, guess I'll reinstall it just to be safe. Sorry about all the confusion.
It works now. Looks like I never set it to boot through grub during installation. Sorry for the trouble.
No problem at all. Sorry my replies slowed down to the end, been working most of the weekend. Glad you got it working though! :) hope you enjoy linux!