Partition Problems - Dual boot; too much unallocated space; too little for Linux files
 

Hello,

Linux Mint 20.3 wanting to upgrade to 21.2. Mint 21.2 iso burned to usb.

Large (450gb) unallocated space. See either attachment. Want to grow partition sda6 (filesystem) into unallocated space.

Dual boot but lost ability to boot into windows, sda4, after moving a partition around.

I have a Timeshift file of the Linux side and have Windows files backed up.

Any ideas on how to get out of this snake pit?

Thanks for reading!

Adding the space to sda6 is simple enough - you merely have to grow the Extended partition (/dev/sda2) to encompass that space first. Then do sda6. gparted will do it.
No idea how to resurrect Win - I rarely screw with it, just re-install when needed.

First thing I'd try is running "grub2-mkconfig". That thingy is looking for operating systems all over the place and should find your windows at its new(?) position.

If you moved the windows system partition (sda4), grub won't find its boot files as they are in a new location (sectors) so run grub-mkconfig or on Mint, update-grub. Which version of windows are you using? Newer windows are almost always EFI and yours is not. As indicated above, using gparted should add unallocated space after sda6 to that partition as it appears to be contiguous with sda6.

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Moved: This thread is more suitable in <Linux Mint> and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

You were correct. It was simple and now I have some "breathing room" for my Linux file system.
Still working on getting the windows side to boot up.

Couldn't run grub2-mkconfig but did run grub-mkconfig to no avail. Should I persue grub2?

Thanks all

Yes, that is what I did. All of the unallocated space was shown to the far right. In my infinite wisdom :redface: I thought I needed to make unallocated space contiguous to sda6.

And I am dual booting into windows 10.

What partition do you want to make bigger?
For windows you will need a windows dvd/usb to fix repair windows bootloader.

The sda6 partition size is resolved per syg00 instructions.

I have windows10 usb. Need a short guide as how to use it. Do I boot to the installer and use it just for repair? Or do I have to start with Linux livecd? Sorry but I'm drifting here a little.

Thanks again.

No. Some Linux systems use grub2 as the name of the directory and have grub2 in the mkconfig command, Mint is no one of them.

What output did you get when you ran grub-mkconfig from Mint?. Was a windows system detected? You might run it again and post the output here.

I'm not sure what your plans are. Were you planning to install the new Mint alongside the old Mint? You could have simply selected the unallocated space on which to install the new Mint. OR, if you were planning to install the new Mint over the old Mint, you could have done that also. If you needed more space for Mint, you could have simply created a new partition for data and moved your data there or moved your /home directory there and modified /etc/fstab.

Did you do this install yourself or is this an upgrade from windows 7? It is extremely unusual for windsows 10 to be installed in Legacy mode rather than UEFI.

"You might run it again and post the output here."
see attached

"I'm not sure what your plans are."
Now that I have resolved the sda6 partition size, I would like to resolve the dual boot into windows, then upgrade from Mint 20.3 to 21.2.
Referring to the gparted screenshot (attached) it did not occur to me that I had to increase sda2 in order to increase sda6. I now know that gparted makes that crystal clear by looking at the partition tree!

"is this an upgrade from windows 7?"
Not sure. I have been running dual boot with windows10 for many years now. Maybe 8? And can't recall but I do have a windows10 usb.

The bcd store is probably the problem,
Maybe this will help to fix windows:
https://recoverhdd.com/blog/how-to-r...ows-guide.html
https://petri.com/windows-boot-manag...tartup-errors/

Do have a linux live usb ready to reinstall grub just in case the mbr gets overwritten by windows.

Your grub-mkconfig output shows windows found on sda3 which is not going to help in your case as that is a reserved partition which is only 500+MB. The gparted output shows the largest partition is the one you moved, sda4 so you would need to use your windows device (DVD/USB) to repair it and in all likelihood, it will overwrite the MBR code with grub so you will need to reinstall Grub.

I'm not 'aware' of any Linux software to repair the proprietary windows boot code. Some software such as boot repair will add a proper menuentry to grub.cfg but if the windows boot files are either corrupted/missing, it won't boot.

Can't thank you all enough for the help!

It appears that, in an effort to upgrade from Mint 20.3 to 21.2, I will likely get "hung up" unless I do a full new install due to 3rd party applications, and their dependencies, that didn't come from one of the official repositories.(?) Forgive me if I didn't word that properly. Bottom line is a full, clean install of mint and then windows is probably in order. At least I have all of my files.

May be that keeping a log of new third party apps that get installed will allow me to uninstall them and all their dependencies when time comes to upgrade past 21.2? IDK

Craig

I don't want to take up all of your time but I'm unclear about where the windows boot is and where the system files are, or are suppose to be. I attached the current gparted report. Isn't sda3 the windows boot partition? And sda4 windows files? Are they supposed to be together? Is some of this peculiar to a dual boot system?