W7/Linux Mint dual boot upgade

Muchos gracias BFK and severedsolo, you're both stars

If you do the BIOS managed dual boot, after all the other HDDs are disconnected and only the Linux HDD is connected, you could boot the Partition Wizard CD to recover the 48GB space into the "Storage" partition, then boot the Linux CD and do the install, kind'a kill 2 birds with one stone.


First download the Partition Wizard Bootable Disk (PWBD) ISO file to the desktop, be sure to get the PWBD and not the installed version; scroll down to see the download link for the bootable CD ISO file at this link below.

Partition Wizard Free Bootable CD

Then use ImgBurn to burn the ISO to a CD, at no greater than 4x speed with a verify; it was designed for use and works best from a CD rather that a DVD then boot the created CD to make the changes.

ImgBurn Free ISO Burning Software

Well I have a dual boot with Mint 9. Both Mint 9 and Windows 7 are on the same physical disk in my case.

And since they are both on the same physical disk, Mint as well as many other Linux distros would by default install Grub bootloader and removing Linux by deleting the partition where they are installed would take off Grub bootloader as well and Windows 7 would be undetectable at bootup and startup repair wasn't able to fix that. My choice would to to install Linux again so when Grub Bootloader is in place again, Windows 7 would again be detected on the boot menu.

I tried to upgrade to Mint 10 but the thing I really hated was on Mint 10's install setup, I don't have the option to install to "use the largest free space" which I did on Mint 9. The options on Mint 10 was to:

1. Install with Windows side by side that will in turn cut the partition C: which is where Windows 7 is installed into two so that Mint 10 would use the other half.

2. Install to a partition you can choose. However this option is a major fail for me cause when I choose the free space to install Mint 10 into, it says something like "no root file system is defined" and the same thing happens if I choose a formatted partition. So therefore, I can't install Mint 10. I had the same issue with Mint 9 but Mint 9 has the option to install to the largest continuous free space which is how I managed to install Mint 9 some time ago. Since I already deleted the partition where Linux Mint 9 was cause I would place Mint 10 in there, Windows 7 is now undetectable. Since I had problems installing Mint 10, I have to install Mint 9 again to rescue my Windows 7 and that's how I did it.

With regards to the "unallocated space", try right-clicking it and make a new partition out of it and once that 48.83BG partition is done, right-click it again and "Extend Volume" and this is how you can merge this with the 81.17GB free space.

Hi folks

I seem to have had a major disaster last night somewhere along the line.
To cut a long story short I seem to be unable to get my BIOS to boot from disc.
No matter what I tried it refused to do it. F12 gets me a boot choice on my Gigabyte EX58-UD5. That screen would come up but the up/down arrows wouldn't move the selection.
I tried entering the BIOS and attempted to alter my first boot choice in there but I couldn't get it to boot from disc.

I decided to give up for the night and shut down and reconnected all the drives.
I thought I'd just make sure that everything was ok and attempted to boot again but I couldn't boot into Windows. I got a black screen suggesting I put in my Windows Disc and do a repair. I tried this but nothing.
This morning I've been entering BIOS and trying to get back to defaults but I couldn't. I spent an hour or so trying various things but to no avail.
In desperation I powered off and disconnected the two "spare" drives- the Linux +storage !TB and the storage 500GB.
Now I was able to boot into Windows so I did a system restore to about a week ago.
This seemed to work and I have now reconnected all drives and can see them.
However, the system is not running properly. Everything is very slow, keyboard controls are not working eg on boot if I press enter nothing happens.
Also, I have 3 browsers and all of them are problematic. FF keeps failing and crashing, Lunascape is the same. I'm now in Chrome but it's like a fresh install, no speed dial etc.

The only thing I could think of was a repair install so I tried that, following the tutorial on this forum. That failed as I could not do an upgrade as the version I am running is newer than the one on disc (presumably due to SP1?)

I don't know what I've done but things are not running properly and I'm kind of afraid to reboot in case it won't.

Help!

Well, things are looking up a bit. I re-installed FF Nightly and it has reinstated all my addons, speed dial, favourites etc. No such luck with Chrome so I'm starting afresh with that.
I managed to run Windows update and installed 4 updates.
Obviously this required a restart and on my boot page I now have Windows 7 only, no Linux Mint. However, as I said before, if I press the enter key it makes no difference on that or the following screen. I just have to wait until it boots. this never used to happen.
Once in Windows things seem to be running ok so I don't think I need to re-install Windows. However my big worry is that I can't get a boot from disc!
If I did need to re-install or try to install another Linux (I can't access the one I have) I can't.

Any ideas what's gone wrong here would be welcome, John

You did say that you think Linux Mint is on the 81GB free space. If its labelled as "free space" then if Linux Mint was there, its now GONE I suspect along with Grub Bootloader that's why you may be having booting problems, right? Why don't you try a third party boot loader perhaps?

Hello John.



Post another snip of disk management.

Hi Vertex, I think you may be right. Here's a current pic of Disk Management. My Windows install is on Disk 2(C), Disk 1 is the 500gb storage drive and Disc 0 is the one with partitions on it.
They are all NTFS now except the third one, 81.17GB. That says empty space. I presume that means there is nothing on it. Would that be right? I thought that maybe Windows simply couldn't see Linux was on it?
It's a bit academic now. I have Linux Mint 11 RC and Ububntu 11.04 burnt to disk but I can't seem to work out how to boot from disk. I'm sure I could before simply by going F12 and then selecting CD in my boot list. As I say the up/down arrows on my keyboard no longer work in that.
I keep thinking back to what I did last night. I know that out of frustration I tried Wubi. I downloaded and installed it but it kept asking for a disk. I thought that Wubi would download Ubuntu itself.
That's what the tutorial indicated I thought.
I'm very worried about not being able to boot from disk. Linux or a re-install of Windows is no longer possible.
I need to find out what's wrong there. I can live without experimenting with Linux but not W7.

Thanks for you input, John

Hi BFK. I'm struggling here. Must have made a crucial error somewhere. good to see you