[SOLVED] Windows Vista and Zorin 6, No GRUB when booting

Back with another "little problem" good people, the GRUB boot screen is not showing up at all. When I restart/shutdown it just boots straight into Zorin. I took Wolfmans advice in another post and downloaded Boot-Repair, ran it and still nothing. I can use it to re-install the MBR, but then it just boots into Vista.

Here's the url that boot-repair gave me after the "fix": http://paste.ubuntu.com/1093756/

Everything is up to date, and there are no broken packages , so, I'm at a loss...

My machine running Vista Home Premium:
HP Slimline
AMD Athlon 64 (2.5 GHz)
nVidia GeForce 6150SE
1G of RAM

Thanks in Advance,
Nepo

Hi Nepo,

run Boot Repair again and this time select "Advanced Settings" and it should give you more options for a repair.

Alternately you can try running this command in a terminal:

sudo update-grub

and see if this helps to solve the problem!!.

You are running Boot repair in the correct mode aren't you, by that I mean in 32 or 64 Bit according to your system!!.

Regards Wolfman

Defeat!! More or less, lol

After fighting with the Vista/Zorin dual boot, I still can't get grub to show up. I can only make it boot one or the other, but, when it "picks" one, the other is not an option

So, as a work around, I installed Zorin to an external drive. If the drive is on, and I do a restart, my pc will boot Zorin, if it is off, it boots Vista. In the end, I guess this is more or less the same thing as having grub asking which OS I want to use

Thanks Anyway,
Nepo

PS. I appreciate your input, Wolfman, please mark as you think best.

Since you get no grub and it only boots to vista now, do the following:

1)create a live CD with zorin.
2)boot with the live cd and in the live session open terminal and write:

Code:

sudo fdisk -l

You will get a result like the following

Code:

Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1       60280   484191232   83  Linux
/dev/sda2           60280       60802     4191233    5  Extended
/dev/sda5           60280       60802     4191232   82  Linux swap / Solaris

as you see the "linux" partition is on "sda1". Check and see where yours is.

Then do the following:

Code:

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda

Ofcourse change "sda1" to your linux partition (if it is not the same).

Now, reboot.
You will get the grub menu back but there will be no option for vista.
Boot normally to Zorin, open terminal and write

Code:

sudo update-grub

When you reboot now, you will get a grub menu with all the options (zorin, vista, etc.).
However I don't know now how the external drive will cope with all the above. I wish I had seen this thread earlier.

Hi Nepo,

now you have the OS'es on different drives; it will only help using Boot repair if you have the external drive constantly connected I would think!!.

Regards Wolfman

Thanks for the input guys, but, I'm satisfied with my current set up.

@ MV, I updated, purged, re-installed, updated again and even played a few hands of poker with grub, all to no avail

@ Wolfman, I don't need to use boot repair, if the drive is on and plugged in when I boot, I get Zorin, if I want Vista, all I have to do is turn it off or unplug it. And both OS's have 500 Gig of space to use

This actually works out pretty good for me.

Regards,
Nepo