BUT

When I unplug that external harddisk and try to boot my internal one, it still says anyways, thanks for helping here guys

Below is the output I was referring to. You go to the /boot/grub/ directory and run the ls command and the only output you get is "linuxmint.png" which is an image file. None of the other boot files were present.

You ran the update-grub command from your external disk. This would put the stage1 file in the master boot record of your internal disk while the rest of the Grub files are on the external disk Linux Mint partition. Plug in your external, boot from it but this time make sure you boot to the Mint on the internal drive and run the update-grub command from there. That should work.

You wanted me to

• Plug in the external hard-disk.
• Boot Mint from internal harddisk.
• su, update-grub
• reboot

I did all that but when I rebooted I immediately unplugged the external hard-disk and that error re-appeared

Try reinstall Grub while booted to the internal drive:

grub-install /dev/sda

I'm reluctant to give specific advice since I prefer not to use beta software such as Grub2, the tutorial link below gives and explanation, secation 4.G, on reinstalling Grub. I think reinstalling rather than updating is necessary in this case.

http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/grub-2.html

Hopefully this will work?

1 members found this post helpful.

yancek,

Thanks again.

I shall do that after nearly 2-3 days since I'll be out of station now. For now since you have helped so much would you kindly tell me what to read in order to fix the following type of issues:

• BOOTMGR is missing, Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

This problem has been solved now since I re-created partitions through PartedMagic, but I would like to know how to understand that BOOTMGR is related to partition table. What should I read for that ?

I mean what are the basic things that I need to know in order to fix such kind of problems ?

Secondly,
how should I make sure that when I load some other distro on my external disk, it doesn't eat the grub ?

Here are some link on the bootmgr is missing error:

http://www.niharsworld.com/2009/11/0...oot-windows-7/

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/...2-f6064476abd1

I think this is usually a problem with booting windows. If you google the specific error, you will get a lot of hits.

If you want to continue booting from your Mint bootloader on the internal drive, when you install another system install the bootloader of Grub to the root partition of the new system. I imagine you will need to run the update-grub command again. On Grub Legacy, it would be a matter of copying the menu.lst entry from your new system to the menu.lst file of the system you are using to boot. The default install of the bootloader is usually to the master boot record and on most system installs you will need to select an Expert or Advanced tab at some point to get the option to install to the root partition. I haven't used Grub 2 so I'm not sure how the updating works.

I am thankful to you for following up and helping me to solve this issue.

I ran the following on my internal harddisk (from root).
It gave a success message, and when I rebooted the machine without the external harddisk, every thing worked normally

Glad it worked. Not having used Grub2, I wasn't positive it would but it seemed a logical method.

Does having new versions of Grub mean that the standard commands won't work there ?

I do use Google before creating any thread. I had googled it before and got the same links you showed me. But those didn't work. Then Brian and other people in the following thread told me to use MagicParted since the partition table must have been removed !
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...estart-819420/

Now my question to you was how did they know that this error was related to the "missing partition table".

Many thanks to you for helping me out here.

and now I see that you were also a part of that thread

Actually, the grub-install /dev/sda works on Grub Legacy. I usually used a different method. I expect there are new commands but probably the old ones work? Haven't really read much on Grub2.

I doubt if anyone 'knew' it was the partition table. A windows install will generally overwrite whatever is on the master boot record and install its own bootloader information, particularly if non-windows bootloader info is in the mbr. Windows usually shows Linux as unallocated space, at least in my experience which, admitted is pretty limited in windows. My windows 7 system shows the Linux partitions that way.

yancek,

Thank you for following up.

I searched Google for a howto, with the following keyword as I always find something useful on tldp but ...
This search showed all the result WRT LILO ???? I wonder why ! Why not Grub ?
Anyway you have been helpful, and thank you for that.

Most of the hits I get googling master boot record refer to its use in windows so just add Linux to the google. Is this the kind of information you were looking for?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_boot_record
http://librenix.com/?inode=10072

Grub Legacy Documentation Page:

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/legacy/

1 members found this post helpful.

Thank you again for helping me.

I had already discovered the GNU Grub link and the Wikipedia MBR link.

But the following was a new and an informative link for me.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/li...nxw16LinuxBoot

In fact the link this document is pointing towards (at the end), appear to be really informative.

Thank you again for following up.

All I can request you now is, if ever you see such kind of threads any where, please stop and help.

When I posted the second problem discussed here in the correct forum, it was doomed, now in the unrelated forum, I have got this sorted out.