kevmore007
New Member
This is a long one, so pop some popcorn and pull the chairs in tight.
First of all Hi everybody. I'm new here and this is my first post. To keep things tidy this will be my introduction post as well. I am not new to computers, my first computer I used had a paper printer as a monitor!! I am fairly green at Linux. I have been dabbling for years every time Windows pushes me to the edge I will install Linux for a few years and then something will happen and I will switch back to Windows.
Anyway, here is my problem. The laptop is a Lenovo E560 that came with win 10 but I had it downgraded to win 7 pro to use with my drones. Then I decided I wanted to load Mint (cinnamon) onto an external HD using my win 7 laptop to do it. This is where the wheels fell off this wagon. For the life of me I could not get it to work. The installation would almost finish and then stop and I tried several things. I eventually took the Win 7 hd out and put in the external one I was trying to install mint on into the machine and still couldn't finish properly.
So then I put the win 7 hd back into the laptop and it wouldn't boot. Tried fixing it with the win 7 disc and no go.
Still no boot. Then I decided to install mint beside win 7 because I needed a working laptop. So now I've got mint all loaded up and it works fine except for a couple of things. I am not getting the proper linux grub start up menu where I can pick what operating system I want to use, and if I turn the laptop off and restart I have to use a linux grub cd to boot into linux. My computer still refuses to start win 7 at all. I can see all the files using linux and I have even gone in and messed with some of the windows boot files. At this point I need to rebuild my MBR in windows, but can't seem to do this from either win or linux. The linux currently works fine if I don't shut the laptop down, I just let it sleep.
One option I have is to backup all my windows files (pictures etc) and try to install windows beside linux, but I am afraid that i'll mess that up too.
The only reason I need windows is to use excell, open office doesent seem to be able to play nice with excell.
First of all Hi everybody. I'm new here and this is my first post. To keep things tidy this will be my introduction post as well. I am not new to computers, my first computer I used had a paper printer as a monitor!! I am fairly green at Linux. I have been dabbling for years every time Windows pushes me to the edge I will install Linux for a few years and then something will happen and I will switch back to Windows.
Anyway, here is my problem. The laptop is a Lenovo E560 that came with win 10 but I had it downgraded to win 7 pro to use with my drones. Then I decided I wanted to load Mint (cinnamon) onto an external HD using my win 7 laptop to do it. This is where the wheels fell off this wagon. For the life of me I could not get it to work. The installation would almost finish and then stop and I tried several things. I eventually took the Win 7 hd out and put in the external one I was trying to install mint on into the machine and still couldn't finish properly.
So then I put the win 7 hd back into the laptop and it wouldn't boot. Tried fixing it with the win 7 disc and no go.
Still no boot. Then I decided to install mint beside win 7 because I needed a working laptop. So now I've got mint all loaded up and it works fine except for a couple of things. I am not getting the proper linux grub start up menu where I can pick what operating system I want to use, and if I turn the laptop off and restart I have to use a linux grub cd to boot into linux. My computer still refuses to start win 7 at all. I can see all the files using linux and I have even gone in and messed with some of the windows boot files. At this point I need to rebuild my MBR in windows, but can't seem to do this from either win or linux. The linux currently works fine if I don't shut the laptop down, I just let it sleep.
One option I have is to backup all my windows files (pictures etc) and try to install windows beside linux, but I am afraid that i'll mess that up too.
The only reason I need windows is to use excell, open office doesent seem to be able to play nice with excell.