dual-boot GRUB problems

[ablabs]

hi guys (and girls ),

from my windows 7 pc, i tried to make it a dual-boot pc with linux mint.
that worked fine, but i did something wrong, so that linux used almost all of my hard drive. i didnt want that, so i tried repartitioning the disks. as you can read here, that didnt work well. when i tried to boot into linux mint i got the: unknown filesystem, GRUB rescue error.

i deleted the partition linux was on and tried reinstalling linux more then one time, but every time i got that error when booting.

i've let it rest for a while and used a virtual machine to use linux.
But i started to get some issues with windows 7 as well, so reinstalled windows 7.

Because i thought my windows was all fresh and new this time, i tried installing linux again yesterday. this time however i wanted to try ubuntu.
After installing, i tried to boot into ubunutu and discovered linux mint was still an boot option. however, linux mint off course gave me an GRUB recue error again and ubuntu just shows me a purple screen. when i try recovery mode for ubunutu it says: loading initial ramdisk, and does nothing..

now i also deleted the ubuntu partition. and i hope someone can tell me what i have to do to get ubuntu working, besides windows.

two things i think you should know:
- i never had problems with booting into windows. it always boots windows automatically, and when i hit escape i can choose between 'windows boot loader' or the linux OS's. (i would like to keep it that way, btw)
- i now have 3 partitions. one windows recovery partition. the windows partition, and an EFI partition. I dont know whether that EFI partition was always there, but the program easyBCD tells me that the linux bootloader paths are in that partition and windows' isnt.. :

Entry #1
Name: linuxmint
BCD ID: {3c517847-ff67-11e1-93a9-806e6f6e6963}
Device: \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Bootloader Path: \EFI\linuxmint\grubx64.efi

Entry #2
Name: ubuntu
BCD ID: {f1d071d0-2535-11e2-af5e-806e6f6e6963}
Device: \Device\HarddiskVolume1
Bootloader Path: EFI\Ubuntu\grubx64.efi

Entry #3
Name: CD/DVD Drive
BCD ID: {ca4baa12-af9c-11e1-a974-84480c09a056}
Device: Unknown
Bootloader Path:

Entry #4
Name: Windows 7
BCD ID: {current}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.efi

 

[NyxCharon]

Are you willing to do a fresh install of both? That would be the best thing to do at this point.

If not, do any of the Linux OS's work? If so, run a
fdisk -l
which will give you the names/numbers of each partition.
You should see /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2, etc
If you have multiple drives, it'll sdb, sdc, etc.

From the linux OS, do a
sudo grub-install /dev/sda where sda is the hard drive name that has linux on it.
Then do a
sudo update-grub.

That will detect all the OS's and regenerate the menu. As a side note, partition off the linux Os'es you don't plan on using or are broken first.


If you can't boot into a Linux OS, fire up a live disc and do the same thing.
Ideally though, you should format the whole disc, setup the partions for each OS.
Then install windows, followed by the Linux OS(s) that you want. The just run
sudo update-grub
when you're done to have your grub menu regenerated.

 

[ablabs]

thanks for your answer!

i dont really have that much of a problem with a fresh install. But as i said, i have recently done that. and still after that, linux mint shows up in the bootmenu. And ubuntu, which i installed after that fresh install also doesnt work.
To be clear: Since i deleted a partition linux mint was on, i havent been able to boot either linux mint or ubuntu without a live-cd (usb, btw). Even not after a fresh install of windows.

So do you think it will help to do a fresh install? because last time it didnt...
btw, it might be important to know that i didnt get a windows cd. i did my fresh install with the recovery partition. maybe thats the reason its not really a fresh install??

Another sidenote: since i bought my laptop just recently, i have been offered windows 8 for free. I dont really know whether i want it or not. But if it doesnt make it more difficult (or easier) please let me know. if it makes things only more complicated, forget about it then.