Solved W7/Linux Mint dual boot upgade

[johnwillyums]

In fact it's completely changed Windows is now on Disk 2 and the 1TB disk is 0

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Don't do anything else until we get this one figured out, this doesn't make sense.

 

[johnwillyums]

Yes. I got a list-floppy, LS120, +hard drive, cdrom, zip and a lot of USB option. I selected +hard drive and that showed me the three drives so I selected the 1TB with the partitions on. Shall I go back and reboot and see if it needs changing back? When I looked it seemed to have reverted to floppy at the top. Maybe it is still altered in the HDD sub menu.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

Yes just reboot and see if Windows starts, if it doesn't remove the other HDDs and just leave the Windows 7 HDD connected.

 

[johnwillyums]

OK, I'll look at F12 as well and see if that HDD sub menu is still altered.

 

[johnwillyums]

Well. I went to F12 and that showed floppy at the top. I moved down to +hard drive and selected that and I got the list as it was before with the Windows disk as disk 0.
This was highlighted but I selected it by pressing enter anyway. Everything seems to have reverted back to how it should be. Weird BIOS.

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

That is strange.


Now get the 500GB HDD marked as inactive, just make sure it lists as 465GB in "list disk" to be sure you have the correct one, when finished post another snip to make sure.

Do not reboot until you post a snip after.

​

 

[johnwillyums]

Also, it still booted Windows with the configuration altered before.

 

[johnwillyums]

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?

 

[johnwillyums]

Snip of the command prompt or disk management or both?

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

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.

Snip of the command prompt or disk management or both?

Just disk management.

 

[johnwillyums]

ok. Here goes

 

[johnwillyums]

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

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

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.

 

[johnwillyums]

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)

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

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.

 

[johnwillyums]

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

 

[severedsolo]

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.

 

[johnwillyums]

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.

 

[Vertex]

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.