PC not booting up anymore, need help ASAP.

[Thomas Anderson]

I just tried to install Linux Mint 14 cinnamon on my PC, but after the reboot, my PC keeps hanging on the white bar that flickers on a black background, I tried restoring Windows7 with the installation disk, without success.
I installed Linux on a separate disk of 500GB, Windows is on a 1TB disk, the 500GB disk was just plugged in into the computer, windows said it was unallocated, so I installed Linux on it, I've seen GRUB installling, but it doesn't boot up on start up.

Has anybody any idea WTF just happend ? And how can I fix this ?

[saikee]

In every multi operaing systems set up the user must know where each system to be installed.

If you use Linux you need to know its device names so that you can instruct its installer where to put the Linux.

If your 500Gb disk is an plug in type that means it is attached to a USB and not a eSata as the latter is regarded as an internal disk. The bios detects the hard disks in a factory-fixed order and the first internal disk for booting is called sda in Linux. Thus if everything works your plug-in 500Gb disk should be sdb.

In you situation I suggest you establish what are the disks and partitions as seen in Linux. This you can do by booting up Linux Mint as a Live CD, choose a terminal and issue the following commands

sudo fdisk -l

This command will list every hard disk and partition. Post its output here so that we could advise your next step.

If you have done what you have indicated then the 1TB disk should be sda and there could be 2 partitions inside; one for recovery or System Reserved and another for the Win7. You can tell by the disk size and the partition ID 7 which is exclusively for ntfs filing system.

Your 500Gb hard disk should have partition 83, native for Linux and possibly a Type 82 for swap.

If the above infpormation is correct then you have installed the Linux correctly but might have place Grub incorrectly or the Installer has not taken into account that Mint is in the second hard disk. A Linux installer is a program and can have bugs.

It is quite easy and simple to fix the boot loader as long as you know where to look for the essential information. The occupation of MBR does not do any damage to either system.

Both systems will be very safe as long as you do not give the green light to "format" any of the partitions.

You can run Linux as a Live CD when both systems are down. It just likes a bit longer to boot up.

I mention the detection sequence in the above because if your 500Gb has been submitted as an internal hard disk it might upset the disk order resulting the sda and sdb swapped position. This could be another possible reason of ending up with a blinking screen.

[Thomas Anderson]

I mention the detection sequence in the above because if your 500Gb has been submitted as an internal hard disk it might upset the disk order resulting the sda and sdb swapped position. This could be another possible reason of ending up with a blinking screen.

saikee; you're my hero, the sequence just swapped, I feel like an idiot right now, I tried everything to get it working; reinstalling GRUB, repartitioning, updating GRUB, ...
Now my Linux is on sda and my MichaelSoft Windblows on sdb, what exactly does that mean ? is sda just a name for my 500GB disk ?

Anyway: you're post helped me allot, and I'm really enjoying Linux, it's fast, clean, powerful, and actually fun !
Many thanks !
~Anderson.