Dual Boot Windows 7 And Linux Mint 10

[Ken]

I've done some "googleing", but haven't been able to come up with any good (easy) answer. I would like to be able to "save" the Grub boot info for times when I manage to wipe it out. I'm looking for a way to save it and then be able to "easily" load it back if I have accidently lost it in my "playing". Recently I had a need to reload a Windows Image that I had made using Acronis True Image. When I did this, it wrote over the boot file and would no longer dual boot. Would only boot into Windows. The only way I could boot back in to Mint, was to reload Mint from scratch. Anybody have some information on this?

[RKASA]

use a live linux cd and run the re do master boot record. It will write a menu and install a fresh boot loader - it is also a way to recover it. A good cd version of rescue type live cd or most any you can install from should do it. disclaimer I have not done anything with win7 but don't recall hearing it is any different then xp in this regard.

[RKASA]

Back up the grub check out the dd command for linux and run a back up boot loader type command it will copy bit for bit the first sector which can be copied back by reversing the command inputs, but you should be able to just re do it any time you need to.

[Crushdepth]

Another option - install Virtual Box, then run the other OS as a virtual machine within it. Saves a lot of headache and the advantage is you can use both at once without rebooting.

Downside: Need a lot of RAM.

[sulasno]

what about the requirements for the display in addition to the physical RAM ?

[tomuchrice]

1. boot from Ubuntu live CD (or any other live cd)

2. start a terminal

3.

sudo grub

find /boot/grub/stage1

root (hdX,Y)

setup (hdX)

quit

[RKASA]

Yes - but a native of each is good to. I game on XP and do heavy stuff on linux to. I have some windows in vitualbox for easy stuff like my modem that needs windows to forward ports and monitor the gateway so I can do that without rebooting in fact it auto starts when I start linux and places itself on desktop 5. Sharing 4gig works pretty well I only need 512m in xp for what I do there in virtualbox.

Really the vary best is just have two good boxes one with each.

"what about the requirements for the display in addition to the physical RAM ?" that is all built into the VM or VB as it has a virtual screen drive etc. only the ram is split between them but you can control how much each one sees. usb and cd's can be mounted in one or the other via the menu.

[Crushdepth]

I used to dual boot all of my machines, but I just got sick of rebooting. Usually you will spend most of your time in one OS or the other. Life is much simpler with a virtual machine for the other OS.

Display is no problem, it's just another window.

[tomuchrice]

Gave up dual boot years ago, I really don't like to reboot and mess up my uptime but than again I am not a gamer.

If I can not find a Linux solution most of the time wine can handle it. For other things I have a virtualbox installed which I used to use for xp. At the moment I don't even have windows installed in there because I have no need for it.

Testing iso's is all I do in VB.

[Ken]

use a live linux cd and run the re do master boot record. It will write a menu and install a fresh boot loader - it is also a way to recover it. A good cd version of rescue type live cd or most any you can install from should do it. disclaimer I have not done anything with win7 but don't recall hearing it is any different then xp in this regard.

Everyone, thanks for the replys. As a note, I am pretty new to Linux. RKASA, I'm interested in just exactly how to do the "re do master boot record" from the live cd. Thanks.

[tomuchrice]

I did post the exact instructions already 4 posts up.

1. boot from Ubuntu live CD (or any other live cd)

2. start a terminal

3.

sudo grub # starts the grub editor

find /boot/grub/stage1 # this output of the command will show you where your grub is written to. Something like (hd1,0)

root (hdX,Y) # <-- you will need to replace the (hd.X,Y with the real hd (hard drive). So the output from the previous command.

setup (hdX) # same here replace the hdX with your real hd.

quit # quits the grub editor and saves the changes

Now reboot and your grub should be restored.

[RKASA]

Once the live cd is loaded and running just go to the menu and run it. On pc linux os livecd it is found under pc > more apps > configruation > redoMBR It can be done from the commandline also - open a terminal on the desktop and see the above post tomuchrice some livecd do not use sudo so they would

su <enter>

asks for password (some cd's use the word root as password when live)

if you sudo grub it will ask for password and run the grub without entering that again- your just doing the su and grub line at the same time

grub <enter> if not sudo

find /boot/grub/stage1 (enter) uses the find command to return the location of stage1- example hd0,1 use that to enter the next lines

root (hdX,Y) <enter> fill in x and y from information above

setup (hdX) <enter> again from info above

quit <enter>

you can just wait here a minute and then halt <enter> remove cd and restart

redo MBR if on a menu is a script that does the same thing as in terminal but one click - you may get the option to edit the menu of the boot screen from the script which is handy but can just click save and close if it looks confusing to ya - wait a minute and shutdown and restart without the cd in. Bingo

edit I see tomucrice types faster then me

Edited June 1, 2011 by RKASA

[keeniau96]

I find that rescatux is excellent to keep on hand for "just in case". Used it just last week for friend with dual-boot where the Grub got buggered and only Win came up. The rescatux CD did a quick and easy restore.

I have dual-boot (Mint & Win7) but rarely do Win boot. VirtualBox v.4 is really adequate for the few Win apps I may want to run (MS Money, special banking app); these install and run with no problems.

[Ken]

RKASA (and tomuchrice). Thanks for your ideas. Like I said, I'm quite new to Linux and I'm now using MINT 11. When I boot the DVD with MINT 11 and try the terminal commands, first it doesn't find grub, but gives me the option to "The program grub is currently not installed. You can install it by typing: sudo apt-get install grub. OK, so I went ahead and installed grub. Now at the grub prompt I type in find /boot/grub/stage1 and hit enter. The response back is "error 15 file not found". So not sure what to do from here.

I have downloaded rescatux as per keeniau96 post (thanks keeniau96). I created the CD and it looks like this will do what I need. I went thru the motions and all seemed to work, but Grub wasn't corrupted at this point either. Maybe I'll go ahead and wipe grub out myself and try the rescatux again.

[Ken]

Got "brave" and wiped out grub. Could no longer dual boot, but boot into Windows ok. Put in the rescaltux CD and used it to reload the Grub. Quite easy to do and now have the dual boot back again. Thanks again keeniau96.

To the suggestions of using virtualbox. Maybe I'll give that a try also. Thanks.

[bendejo]

I used to dual-boot using grub. But now none of the grub emergency tools work on my current laptop (Compaq CQ40), neither super_grub nor rescatux. Had a disk crash last month and re-installed win7 but have not put Linux back on yet. I'm considering of going with Mint (instead of Ubuntu) and using Acronis boot loader instead of grub.

grub comes in handy for making multi-boot pen drives, but that's the best I can say about it at this point.