Member Avatar for vinodvinu

Hi there,
I have win xp sp3 and Linux mint14 in my PC. Now i want to uninstall xp and install Windows 8. Do i need to uninstall Linux mint for installing windows 8 ?. I don't want to uninstall Linux Mint. Please help.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by mjdodd

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— You do not need to uninstall Linux Mint to put Windows 8 on the machine. and are on the right track: remove or overwrite the XP partition during the Windows installer, install Windows 8 there, and then restore your Linux bootloader so Mint appears again in the boot menu.

Before you start, make a backup and record the partition layout (from Mint live or your current Mint: lsblk -f or sudo fdisk -l). Note which partition is XP (NTFS) and which are Mint (ext4, swap). During the Windows 8 installer choose "Custom" and target only the XP partition—do not delete or format any ext4/swap partitions used by Mint.

After Windows is installed it will replace the bootloader and Mint will not boot. The usual repair paths are:

  • Restore GRUB from a Mint live USB by chrooting into your installed Mint and reinstalling GRUB (example below).
  • Or use a graphical repair tool (Boot-Repair or similar) from a live session to automate the process.

Example manual restore (assume Mint root is /dev/sda2 and disk is /dev/sda — change to your layout):

sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
sudo mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
sudo mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
sudo chroot /mnt
grub-install /dev/sda
update-grub
exit
sudo umount /mnt/dev /mnt/proc /mnt/sys /mnt

If your machine uses UEFI (check live session: [ -d /sys/firmware/efi ] && echo UEFI || echo BIOS), mount the EFI partition at /mnt/boot/efi before chroot and use grub-install with the appropriate --efi-directory option, or let a GUI tool handle it.

Final notes: run sudo os-prober and sudo update-grub inside the chroot so Windows is detected. Be careful which device you install GRUB to, and always keep backups (or a Clonezilla image) in case you need to revert.

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Member Avatar for BigPaw

If something like Grub is your Boot Menu, then removing XP and installing W8 will be relatively easy.

However, once you have wiped XP and install W8 you will not be able to boot into Mint immediately, at first you will only be able to boot to W8, but don it panic when this happens. When you have installed W8 you will need to boot from Rescatux. Rescatux will fix the Boot Menu allowing you again the option to boot to either W8 or Mint. Use Rescatux 0.30.2 or higher only.

If Grub is not your Boot Menu, then before you go any further please tell us more about your boot configuration.

Edited by BigPaw
Member Avatar for mjdodd

you can also if you examine or print out your grub loader before doing anything and then do the installing and then return to the grub load and intelligently modify it (substitute win8 for xp) ...you may need a software disk to allow you to directly read the grub file.
M

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