0

I am pretty sure this is a common beginner mistake and it is already answered, but i couldn't find anything helpful.
So since this happened to me twice, I would like to know where my mistake is and what i can do to prevent this.
Also it would be awesome if there was a way of fixing this without losing my data.

What happened is, I created another ext4 partition alongside my existing Xubuntu system (consisting of a EFI and a ext4 partition) and then installed Peppermint on it (the first time this happened it was Windows 7, so i don't think the OS matters at all). Both OS worked perfectly fine, but when I decided to delete the new partition (the one with Peppermint), i couldn't boot it any more, instead it would show me a grub console where I could enter commands. I can still boot from a live Disc tho.

Thank you for helping and being an awesome community allaround. Johannds

Daniele Santi
  • 3,164
Johannes soupschwitzer soupsch
  • 25
  • 1
  • 4
  • 1
    When you installed a new OS (peppermint, Windows 7, et al) after Ubuntu, do you suppose that it is possible that the new OS wrote their own boot loaders onto the disk? And that then removing the partition with the OS, removed what the bootloader was linking to? – Charles Green Jan 24 '19 at 16:10

1 Answers1

0

The issue is coming because your new distro (Peppermint) override grub boot loader (in your MBR). When you install your new distro, grub will use as boot partition the other ext4 partition.

The solution consists to ask newly installed distro do not install grub (not sure it's always possible). Then from your exiting Xubuntu, from Terminal, do a sudo update-grub which detect your new operating system.

When you want to delete your temporary operation system, delete the partition from Xubuntu, then run again sudo update-grub to clean up the old entries.

For now you have to repair your grub (not required to reinstall everything). You can follow this process :

https://howtoubuntu.org/how-to-repair-restore-reinstall-grub-2-with-a-ubuntu-live-cd

ob2
  • 3,553
  • Thank you, this was very helpful, but i think I either messed something up or didn't do it right some way. Edit: accidently sent without finishing. So i followed the tutuorial you sent me, but as soon as it comes to installing grub, I get an error "cant find efi directory" or something. I think that the error might be caused by not using chroot correctly (It shows root@LivdmediumOS, i THINK it should show root@mountedpartitionOS, shouldn't it?) – Johannes soupschwitzer soupsch Jan 24 '19 at 18:32
  • No, chroot keep you in something like root@liveOS. You know if you are running EFI on your system? – ob2 Jan 25 '19 at 07:35
  • Yes, i am indeed. I already fixed it by following the tips given here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/831216/how-can-i-reinstall-grub-to-the-efi-partition – Johannes soupschwitzer soupsch Jan 26 '19 at 14:58