Seems to claim it worked - if you have a MBR.

Did you partition your drive and format it correctly before installation?
During installation you have the option where you want to install Grub.

well i formatted it but didn't partition it, I chose the option to erase the drive and install mint

That means that the simple version of the Mint install has:-

1. Partitioned your disk with one partition.
2. Formatted that partition.

but when i check gparted it says there are four partitions

sda1 which is 457gbs in size with 11 being used and has the flag: boot
sda2 which is 8gb's in size with no used or unused space
sda5 which is in a dropdown of sda2, its 8gbs in size but has 40kb's used and the flag linux swap
and last unalocated which is 1.02 mbs in size

A bit strange - but it looks like Mint tried to create 8GB as a swap partition.

However, sda2 is an extended partition which can hold logical partitions such as sda5, sda6 etc
sda2 doesn't have data in it - the partitions inside sda2 hold the data.

So sda5 is your swap partition.

The unallocated space isn't a partition.

So you have just TWO primary partitions (sda1 & sda2).

so i should try reinstalling grub on both and see if anything changes?

No it's fine.

sda1 contains your / and your /home directories
sda5 contains your swap partition.

You shouldn't have any reference to sda2.

Check your /etc/fstab file accords with the above.

If you really want to reinstall again, I would delete all partitions first, using gparted.

well i checked the file in the file browser and its empty : does that mean someethings wrong?

You will have to write your own /etc/fstab.

Maybe something like...Change the uuid's to appropriate values.

so is there a way to find out what the values should be?

Use the blkid command - examplesda5 will be your swap partition, which I don't use.

so if my the blkid result is this

mint@mint ~ $ sudo blkid
/dev/loop0: TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/sr1: LABEL="U3 System" TYPE="iso9660"
/dev/sdb1: LABEL="UUI" UUID="0E8A-7D86" TYPE="vfat"
/dev/sda1: UUID="402c340e-eac9-4635-9cab-38f61e405fd4" TYPE="ext4"
/dev/sda5: UUID="0b50c1b0-2a75-4596-a88c-aaae76d28ac6" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sdd1: UUID="6B96906A13EC92B2" TYPE="ntfs"

my script should look like this?

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>

proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/sda1
UUID=402c340e-eac9-4635-9cab-38f61e405fd4 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/sda5
UUID=cee15eca-0b50c1b0-2a75-4596-a88c-aaae76d28ac6 none swap sw 0 0

It should be sufficient to boot and run Linux.
You will need to add extra entries if you want those ntfs partitions auto-mounted.
You will also need extra entries to get access to your CD or DVD.

Mine readsNote that my /dev contains sr0 and also a link cdrom -> sr0, /media contains cdrom0 and a link cdrom -> cdrom0

i just tried it and its still not letting me boot. i reinstalled before making the file because i didn't know about the open as root command in the file browser, the error message changed to invalied extent but it seems to change between that and normal.mod not found every time i reinstall so i assume theres an error in the document somewhere