Installing mint

[davholla]

Well I tried that and I got this

mount /dev/sdb6 /mnt/dude_said_mount_here
mint mint # mount --bind /dev  /mnt/dude_said_mount_here/dev
mint mint # grub-install /dev/sda
error: unknown LVM metadata header.
grub-probe: error: cannot find a device for /boot (is /dev mounted?).
error: unknown LVM metadata header.
/usr/sbin/grub-probe: error: cannot find a device for /boot/grub (is /dev mounted?).

Now when I reboot I just a grub prompt which is a pain although thanks to your help not the end of the world.

[saikee]

Sorry it was my mistake of not telling you exactly what to do.

Choice #1:

If you are able to boot up Mint manually using the Grub prompt, which you said you can in Post #14 then try these commands in a terminal

sudo su
grub-install /dev/sda

Choice #2 (if Choice #1 fails)

Boot up Mint Linux as Live CD and try these instructions

sudo su
mkdir /mnt/dude_said_mount_here
mount /dev/sdb6 /mnt/dude_said_mount_here
mount --bind /dev  /mnt/dude_said_mount_here/dev
grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/dude_said_mount_here  /dev/sda

You can do either but the first one is a lot faster. Try Choice #2 only if #1 fails. I missed out the red bit in my last post.

The two choices are essentially the same but in the 1st choice you boot up the resident Mint already and have no necessity to mount the partition or to tell Grub what is its root directory. The second choice work with any distro that has Grub2 inside.

[davholla]

sudo su
grub-install /dev/sda

Worked fine, thank you so much.
Now one last - sorry question
[CODE]Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 63 128519 64228+ 6 FAT16
/dev/sda2 129024 21100543 10485760 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 * 21100544 497452724 238176090+ 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda4 497452786 976768064 239657639+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 497452788 497661569 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 497661633 976768064 239553216 8e Linux LVM
CODE]
Are all of these partitions being used? Or are some of them just rubbish created by letting someone who should have been messing
around with it doing so? (i.e. me).

[saikee]

yes they are all used for specific purposes.

My guess is sda1 is a partition the PC vendor stores the hardware drivers as it is very small.

Your Windows occupies sda2 & sda3. One of them is likely the boot partition called System Reserved which is normally hidden when Windows in operation and the other is the actual partition of Drive "C". one of the two could also be created it for back up purpose.

sda4 is an extended partition which is just a border with sda5 & sda6 inside. sda4 itself is not a working partition. You will find the its start point is same as sda5 and it ends at the tail of sda6.

sda5 & sda6 are for Linux and two were created only at your explicit instruction of allowing the installer to use LVM partition (sda6). All Linux (and Windows too but need a bit of persuasion) can be installed in one partition if the user wishes to do so. Modern MS Windows prefer to have two partitions though.

[davholla]

Thank you so much for your help. This is a great weight off my mind.
It has been a long process (nothing to do with you I was going to start in November but got pneumonia).