Linux Mint screws up dual-boot with WinXP since v17 for me


K

Klumpen

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Hello folks,

I never had a problem with dual-booting between Mint 16 and WinXP (SP3),

when Mint 17 came out and I tried it, WinXP just made beep and froze in the initial black screen after choosing it.

I went back to 16 and waited for a while, now two versions later (17v2 & 17.1) I tried it again and the same thing happened.

Did they drop WinXP dual-boot support or what happened in Mint 17?

I tried the tool "ubuntu boot-repair" and it didn't change anything.

Does anybody know what's happening and if the problem can be solved?
 
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ekianjo said:
Klumpen said:
Did they drop WinXP dual-boot support or what happened in Mint 17?
Click to expand...
I have a recent Mint on dual boot on my PC and it caused no problem so far... Not sure why you have this issue. You did not mess up with GRUB right ?
Click to expand...
Nope, I didn't do anything with it, it's the automatic grub installation that comes with installing Mint and I got the same result with Mint 17 as with 17.1,

it always works after installing Mint 16 (just like now).
 
Have you tried using dpkg-reconfigure to see if there were any changes with the boot enteries? does os-prober recognize your WinXP installation?
 
Night said:
Have you tried using dpkg-reconfigure to see if there were any changes with the boot enteries?
Click to expand...
No, what's this?

Night said:
does os-prober recognize your WinXP installation?
Click to expand...
Yes, it's listed correctly in the boot menu, just like with Mint16, it just instacrashes after selecting.

My XP partition seems to be ok, because after installing Mint16, it instantly worked again without any manual configuration.
 
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Try running "dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc" to reconfigure your grub installation and afterwards run "update-grub" to re-generate the boot enteries if the previous action didn't do so (just make sure you really are using grub-pc and not the EFI version).
 
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not sure but im assuming your xp pc is pre UEFI? probably added something in the bootloader for handling newer UEFI bios boots and screwed up something for those that don't upgrade their pc every five seconds. dunno though thats just speculation on my part.
 
Not yet, didn't have much time/nerve for it due to very bad family business.

Will try again soon.

Did I understand you guys right, that I should consider a BIOS update to solve the issue?

I don't even know if there are any for my old board.
 
No, mainstream linux should still work on old BIOS-based machines. I doubt there's an update to UEFI.


I've never run Windows on any of my machines, so you'll have to forgive me, but what partitions have you got? A boot one, containing grub and a linux kernel, then at least two more (one for Windows and one for the linux rootfs).


If so, that helps as it means you can ignore the linux partition since it shouldn't get touched if you choose Windows from GRUB. You could diff the grub configuration for Mint 16 and Mint 17, although actually I wonder if Mint 17 has switched to Syslinux or something else.


Theoretically, if you backup your Mint 16 boot partition, you use its contents to restore a working GRUB configuration, although I've just done a bit of research and that's a little more complex than I'd recalled on Ubuntu/Mint, so I'll resist doing any more research just yet.
 
Night said:
Try running "dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc" to reconfigure your grub installation and afterwards run "update-grub" to re-generate the boot enteries if the previous action didn't do so (just make sure you really are using grub-pc and not the EFI version).
Click to expand...
EFI?

Axecop said:
not sure but im assuming your xp pc is pre UEFI? probably added something in the bootloader for handling newer UEFI bios boots and screwed up something for those that don't upgrade their pc every five seconds. dunno though thats just speculation on my part.
Click to expand...
UEFI?

comradekingu said:
Run a "update-grub" and see if that fixes things.
Click to expand...
Shouldn't MINT do this automatically after the installation? It creates all the boot stuff itself anyway and it does find my XP partition, just makes it stop working.

I may with the next try, since I have to use the PC somehow, I had to set my Mint16 up again up to some point.

Just installing Mint17 again to try this command, failing and then having to install Mint16 AGAIN to be able to use Mint and XP is just.. gnaah.
 
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You seem to have ignored my suggestion http://www.supergrubdisk.org/(probably because I know as much about grub as you ;) ) but based on your comments that might be exactly what you need. It helped me solve a dual boot issue a few ubuntu's ago. 
 
b_o_b said:
You seem to have ignored my suggestion http://www.supergrubdisk.org/(probably because I know as much about grub as you ;) ) but based on your comments that might be exactly what you need. It helped me solve a dual boot issue a few ubuntu's ago. 
Click to expand...
Sorry, I simply have missed it due to small screens (Pandora/Tablet) and lack of height of the post due to missing avatar.

Sounds good. I'll get this, thank you!
 
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I think I know the problem now (finally).

After having bought a new video card for my old system (Geforce GTX 750) and after having installed Mint 17v2 again I can read an error message now when booting WinXP,

it says I have a Virus in its boot sector, which is weird because my XP partition is quite clean since it's offline and even the whole partition table of the harddrive isn't very old.

When pressing Y(es) I can boot up XP just fine now and Gothic 3 finally doesn't crash on me anymore and runs quite well with the new card (which doesn't need much power and is quite small and efficient).

It seems I should scan this partition for rootkits soon, I wonder if it's a false positive and why it shows up with Mint 17 installed but not Mint 16.
 
Is it Windows itself that warns you about a virus ? or some other program/antivirus loaded during the boot ? (or maybe the BIOS ?)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
PowerGod said:
Is it Windows itself that warns you about a virus ? or some other program/antivirus loaded during the boot ? (or maybe the BIOS ?)
Click to expand...
It looks like the bootloader is warning me already after selecting the WinXP-partition since it's before Windows even starts booting.

The font looks exactly the same as on the screen with the boot options.
 
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