Dad's got himself a new laptop and wants to put Mint on it.
It's got Win7 (Home Premium) on it, and I've heard that GRUB doesn't play nice with it.

We've got the LiveCD ready to use, but we're kind of wary about using it to install Mint, because he wants to keep Win7 to dual boot, and I'm wondering how to 'fix' GRUB so he can.

If there's no other choice, I'll give GRUB2 a go, but honestly, I'd prefer old familiar GRUB.

Thanks in advance.

In my opinion Mint Gloria is MINT 7
Mint 7 use GRUB 1 .
I am do not use windows 7 but from what I read about it you should use windows utility to shrink the windows partition to make room for Mint.
It might be possible that MINT 7 detected windows 7 by default , if not you should modify the menu.lst of Mint 7
But making a backup before installing is always a good idea.
Do you have the windows 7 CD Or DVd just in case something goes wrong.
Some distros who use GRUB2 also gives you the choice to use GRUB1
Hopes this helps you

Hi,

Before switching entirely to Slackware I had Windows 7 on my laptop along side with Ubuntu 9.04. I used the Windows 7 option to shrink the partition to free up space and make it available for Ubuntu. After that I just booted from the CD and installed on the free space, letting Ubuntu to all the work, including installing Grub. After that it was perfectly booting both OS using Grub. I imagine you could do so with MINT also.

Kind regards,

Eric

don't use the partitioning utility from within Mint ( or Gparted from any linux O/S),
under Vista or win7, as it can / does cause windows to crash (the layout of its file location's is more fixed, than it was under XP).
Use the M$ built-in utility, as above, to pre-shrink the partition size 1st, & then re-boot M$,
& then, finally run the install from the mint cd.

You may prefer Mint7 Gloria to Mint8 Helena ....

Right, so as I understand it, use Win7's own partitioning tool to make room for the Mint and Swap partitions, and then install 7, which should leave Grub working alright.
I don't have any actual Win7 media, this laptop of dad's came with it install. I think there's a way to make a backup CD, which I'll get him to sort out before I do anything.

Thanks for your help.

My advise to you're dad will be go back to the shop where he buys the laptop and ask fore the install CD OR DVD .
He pays fore Windows7 is it not .
And beside installing MINT there is always the possibility that the laptop crash.
So you have to reinstall and you can not do it without the install media.

I assumed that's why you could create your own recovery media.
Unfortunatly though, the 'store' it's from is a mail order catalog, but it's usually not too difficult to get in touch with them. I'll talk to them about it.

Now, does anyone happen to know what this Win7 own partition editor is called, or where it's found? I'm too used to Linux, I can't find the damned thing.

Disk Management .

Windows 7 and Vista include a built-in functionality in Disk Management to shrink and expand partitions.

To get to this utility, open up Control Panel, and type in partition into the search box..

In the Disk Management screen, just right-click on the partition that you want to shrink, and select “Shrink Volume” from the menu.


http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windo...windows-vista/

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I had Windows 7 on a PC at work, then simply put in the linux mint 7 cd, (have not tried 8) installed inside of windows changed the partion size to half and half with mint CD, and I have had zero problems!

Mint 8 hasn't got the Mint4Win.exe as does Mint 7.
so, you can't install Mint 8 "inside" windows.
you'll have to partition as stated in the above post(s).

that sucks but thanks for clearing that up!

So what do you suggest if I want to upgrade my home PC which I have to have windows preferably seven but of course want a new linux installed inside of it??????????????????

Follow post #3 to shrink the M$ partition by some 20Gb, & then reboot with a Mint cd in the drive, & hit the install icon on the live desktop.

Or, if you really want to run Mint inside M$,
then boot with a Mint 7 cd, instead.

A word of caution about Grub. I would personally recommend Mint7 over Mint8 for those new to Linux and coming from Windows. Mint4win.exe is certainly a driving force towards Mint7, but another topic that I have not yet seen mentioned is that the version of Grub changes drastically from Mint7 (Grub-Legacy) to Mint8 (Grub-pc / Grub2).

EDIT: OK. Grub was mentioned at the top of the post but that was before supper. Guess I was hungry and focused more on the grub you eat than the Grub you boot with. ;-) Still, Grub2 has a bit to go before being considered ready for all users, IMO.

You will find more readily available support for Grub-Legacy than for Grub2. The functionality of Grub2 is potentially far superior but as of yet not enough of the bugs have been worked through. Also, the documentation is just starting to get fleshed out (but you still need to know where to look to find it).

Don't get me wrong -- I love Mint8 and am beginning to like Grub2. But it has taken a little bit of time to learn what I needed to get around some of the rough edges on Grub2.