W7/Linux Mint dual boot upgade

johnwillyums said:

So do I just bring up an elevated command prompt and write "diskpart" and then do I have to type in the other commands you have outlined?

Just as I have them listed in the second snip of diskpart.

johnwillyums said:

Snip of the command prompt or disk management or both?

Just disk management.

ok. Here goes:)

You're a magic man Ted. Think that worked.

Good job John, that will make life easier in future for you, well done mate.

Just to explain, the Active flag is what tells Windows where the "System" boot files are to be created if ever there's a need to do startup repairs to repair/recreate Windows boot files.



I have seen issues with Windows 7 'confusing' the HDD order in Windows disk management before, that makes me think the old Linux may still be there but not able to boot for some reason, unfortunately I have almost no experience with Linux to be a help getting it booting again.


If there's nothing on the Linux install you need to get to, it may be worth just installing the new Linux you've been wanting to install.

If you do so, disconnect the Windows 7 HDD for the Linux install so the 2 OSs don't interlock with the same boot manager and then you could use the F12 one-time boot menu to select which OS/HDD to boot at PC startup.

Thank you so much for your time and help Ted. It's getting quite late in the evening here and I'm getting tired. I make mistakes when I'm tired

Yes. I think your right. I can install either the new Linux Mint or Ubuntu 11.04. That intrigues me as it isn't using Gnome desktop but a totally new GUI called Unity. This is getting a pretty polarised reception with Ubuntu types so I'd like to have a look at it myself.

I will disconnect the Windows drive as you say but I suspect I may still end up with GRUB as my boot loader, although I believe there are ways of reverting to a Windows boot.
No doubt I shall be bleating for help again either here or on a Linux forum.

I really can't thank you enough for your patience and effort with this. You really are a star
I think I shall leave any further adventures until Saturday as I'm at work tomorrow.

Many, many thanks and good night to you, you are a gentleman (and a scholar)

Thank you sir, I have enjoyed helping you my friend.



One last thing to think about, if you have the OS/HDD booting separately using the F12 one-time menu you will want to use the Grub boot loader for the Linux install, with it installed separately from Windows it can't interfere with the Windows 7 boot loader, that's whats so nice about using that method.

Hopefully but I will still have to access that disk for my media files in the large partition. Linux can read and write to Windows but not the other way round, Windows can't see it.

Oh well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, Good night old fiend and thanks again, john:)

That shouldn't matter John. If you use the one-time boot menu, then once all is set up, you can access the HDD's from either install, but the bootloaders are completely seperate.

Thanks SS. That's good to know and thank you for your input over the last days. This forum is just full of great people, It's unbelievable.

severedsolo said:

That shouldn't matter John. If you use the one-time boot menu, then once all is set up, you can access the HDD's from either install, but the bootloaders are completely seperate.

Windows 7 cannot access the partitions where Linuxes are installed because Linux partitions typically use ext4 file systems that Windows cannot read so its wise to have a huge NTFS partition that both Linux and Windows can access.