Reinstall Grub in target system

Question

I'm trying to restore Grub to boot Linux Mint 13 and Windows 7. I just installed Windows 7, which rewrote the MBR, and then I was told I could simply boot Ubuntu live cd, install boot-repair, and reinstall grub over the MBR. I went through the installation, using the option to purge the old grub, but it failed, asking me to run some terminal commands to uninstall grub. After running those commands, I clicked the "Forward" button, but it said that grub was still installed. I eventually got grub installed on my MBR, and I can manually boot Windows using chainloader, but can't boot linux (it boots to initramfs and I don't know what to do from there). I see that /boot/grub/stage1 is missing, but how to I reinstall grub into my linux partition? I tried supergrubdisk (which is totally not user friendly for the record). At this point boot-repair fails, and I'm not able to uncheck the option to purge the old Grub (it's greyed out). I found this tidbit of info:

Boot-Repair's "Purge GRUB" option can't be unticked if some GRUB executables (eg grub-install) are missing in the system you want to repair. The "Purge GRUB" option will download the GRUB packages from Internet and reinstall them.

But it's not automatically downloading the grub packages from the internet (I do have a connection), and asking to configure my repositories for downloading grub2. Any ideas? Do I have to reformat my linux partition?

Answer 1

If you're getting to the initramfs, grub is done. There should be some message explaining why the initramfs didn't pass control over to the system init (I'd guess it failed to find the root filesystem). That may just be a missing or incorrect root= option being passed from grub (you can use e in grub to edit the entry, and correct it). Then it should boot.

Alternatively, use a rescue disc to boot your Linux install.

Option three, from the Ubuntu livecd, chroot into your install. Make sure to mount /proc and /sys inside the chroot.

Once in your install, dpkg-recofigure grub-pc will probably be enough to fix it. You can hit enter through all the prompts except the "GUB install devices" prompt. In that one, make sure the disk with your MBR (e.g., /dev/sda) is checked.