br1anstorm
Active Member
I have a (spare) second-hand Lenovo T430 laptop with Win7 installed. I want to install Linux Mint alongside it and use EasyBCD to programme the booting so that I can boot into either OS. I have set up such an arrangement successfully in the past on my current daily-use laptop.
This time I have run into a problem. I carried out all the normal steps to install Linux Mint alongside Win7 and added it via EasyBCD (I have v2.4). But when I rebooted, the (Windows MBR) boot screen showed briefly, and then booted straight into Win7 again. No sign of Mint!
I can confirm that the laptop setup is traditional MBR, Legacy etc and not UEFI with all the other complications like Secure Boot.
It looks to me as if the Win7 MBR may somehow have already been modified, and that this may be (part of) the cause. Detailed evidence below**. But just to give the full picture, this is what I did.
**I have noted three clues, or pieces of evidence, which may point to an explanation - and I would welcome advice.
1) originally (when Win7 alone was installed) I noted that on initial boot-up, the Windows Boot Menu screen appeared fleetingly for about two seconds, and it listed two options: Boot to Windows, or Restore the original Windows image. The latter also displayed a warning that choosing it would result in the hard disk being wiped of all its existing contents! The default setting was obviously to proceed and boot normally into Windows. On my other Win7 computers I don't ever see this particular screen or choices;
2) during the installation of Linux Mint, I noticed that in the menu - which appears very early on - of options on how to install (alongside, or replace existing OS, or something else), it said that there were "multiple other OSs" already installed;
3) when booting up after installing Mint and adding it to EasyBCD, when I rebooted that same Windows Boot Menu screen appeared again for a couple of seconds with those same two options (Boot or Restore image) before then going on to boot into Win7 ..... and of course no Mint;
I don't understand the mystery of MBR and the Boot menu. I had assumed that the brief appearance of the Windows Boot Menu, and the Restore option within it, might be part of the Lenovo Recovery setup. And when I saw the Linux had found "multiple OSs" already on the system, I thought this just meant it was seeing the Win7 installation and also an 'image' (presumably in the Recovery partition) of Win7.
It now seems to me possible that if - or because - the Windows MBR has been tweaked to offer a Restore option, this has somehow interfered with, or prevented, EasyBCD modifying the MBR to include, or link to, the Linux Mint Grub 2 bootloader.
Is there any way I can examine or diagnose this without having to modify, rewrite or reinstall the Windows MBR?
Of course I do have the option of undoing/deleting the Linux Mint install (by removing it from EasyBCD, deleting the partitions it occupies and reinstalling Mint in the standard Linux dual-boot way under which the Linux Grub2 replaces the Windows MBR bootloader completely and takes over the entire boot process. But before doing that, I just wonder if there is a simple way of solving the current problem without having to conduct major surgery on the Windows bootloader itself?
This time I have run into a problem. I carried out all the normal steps to install Linux Mint alongside Win7 and added it via EasyBCD (I have v2.4). But when I rebooted, the (Windows MBR) boot screen showed briefly, and then booted straight into Win7 again. No sign of Mint!
I can confirm that the laptop setup is traditional MBR, Legacy etc and not UEFI with all the other complications like Secure Boot.
It looks to me as if the Win7 MBR may somehow have already been modified, and that this may be (part of) the cause. Detailed evidence below**. But just to give the full picture, this is what I did.
- I checked the original partition setup. It consisted of three primary partitions - System Reserved 100MB, Recovery 12.55MB, and Win7_OS about 210GB. The last of these has 'boot' listed when I look at it in disk-management.
- I shrank this Win7 partition - which has only the OS and programs on it, no personal files (yet) - down to 65GB using Windows. This provided 145GB of unallocated space for Linux Mint;
- From a Live session USB of Mint I installed in the usual way. I created a new extended partition (since there were already three primaries). Within that I created partitions for Mint's root (/) dev/sda5, swap dev/sda6, and /home dev/sda7, as normal. I then put Mint's GRUB2 bootloader on sda5.
- then from within Win7 I ran EasyBCD, added Linux Mint - correctly, making it the default - and rebooted. But I did not get - as I had expected - a Windows MBR Boot menu showing the two systems Win7 and Linux Mint, and so no option to choose and get to Mint. It booted up into Win7.
**I have noted three clues, or pieces of evidence, which may point to an explanation - and I would welcome advice.
1) originally (when Win7 alone was installed) I noted that on initial boot-up, the Windows Boot Menu screen appeared fleetingly for about two seconds, and it listed two options: Boot to Windows, or Restore the original Windows image. The latter also displayed a warning that choosing it would result in the hard disk being wiped of all its existing contents! The default setting was obviously to proceed and boot normally into Windows. On my other Win7 computers I don't ever see this particular screen or choices;
2) during the installation of Linux Mint, I noticed that in the menu - which appears very early on - of options on how to install (alongside, or replace existing OS, or something else), it said that there were "multiple other OSs" already installed;
3) when booting up after installing Mint and adding it to EasyBCD, when I rebooted that same Windows Boot Menu screen appeared again for a couple of seconds with those same two options (Boot or Restore image) before then going on to boot into Win7 ..... and of course no Mint;
I don't understand the mystery of MBR and the Boot menu. I had assumed that the brief appearance of the Windows Boot Menu, and the Restore option within it, might be part of the Lenovo Recovery setup. And when I saw the Linux had found "multiple OSs" already on the system, I thought this just meant it was seeing the Win7 installation and also an 'image' (presumably in the Recovery partition) of Win7.
It now seems to me possible that if - or because - the Windows MBR has been tweaked to offer a Restore option, this has somehow interfered with, or prevented, EasyBCD modifying the MBR to include, or link to, the Linux Mint Grub 2 bootloader.
Is there any way I can examine or diagnose this without having to modify, rewrite or reinstall the Windows MBR?
Of course I do have the option of undoing/deleting the Linux Mint install (by removing it from EasyBCD, deleting the partitions it occupies and reinstalling Mint in the standard Linux dual-boot way under which the Linux Grub2 replaces the Windows MBR bootloader completely and takes over the entire boot process. But before doing that, I just wonder if there is a simple way of solving the current problem without having to conduct major surgery on the Windows bootloader itself?