I had been using KDE Neon in dual boot with windows 10. After installing Linux Mint making a triple boot, Neon won't boot. The grub is now Mint's and after selecting the entry for Neon it just gets stuck at the initial splash screen. I'm guessing Neon's bootloader just works differently from Mint's and needs to load up modules that Mint doesn't, or something similar.

I tried grub-customizer, booted live usb's (Mint and Neon) and used boot-repair, but nothing helped.

So here's what I need resolved:
1. How can I restore Neon's grub and successfully boot Neon.
2. If later I want to remove the Mint (or Neon) installation then would a simple format of partitions be sufficient? If I do that would the other distro's boot menu load up automatically? If not then how would one go about doing that?

I don't want to lose my Neon setup as I got very used to it. Any help would be much appreciated.

Have you tried switching the boot order in your Bios to make Neon the primary boot OS?

On a Windows 10 system (uefi) each OS has its own separate set of boot files on the drive's EFI partition , so both Mint and neon should each have their own grub menus, and which one you see depends on which one is set as the primary boot in the bios, or by selecting it using whatever function key your computer uses to select the boot OS.

I don't know for sure what Mint does, but iirc it is using Ubuntu 18.04's grub system, which Neon also uses.
You might boot to Mint and update grub (sudo update-grub), as perhaps the installer didn't set it up correctly, and if you can boot to Neon via the bios, you would need to do the same thing to make Neon's grub know about the new Mint install.

claydoh wrote:Have you tried switching the boot order in your Bios to make Neon the primary boot OS?

Yes I tried that. KDE Neon was already at the top in the boot options order.

claydoh wrote:On a Windows 10 system (uefi) each OS has its own separate set of boot files on the drive's EFI partition , so both Mint and neon should each have their own grub menus, and which one you see depends on which one is set as the primary boot in the bios, or by selecting it using whatever function key your computer uses to select the boot OS.

Can you elaborate on this? I've never used any function key to boot an OS. I just select Neon from the menu and it gets stuck. Mint and Windows 10 boot without a hitch.

claydoh wrote:I don't know for sure what Mint does, but iirc it is using Ubuntu 18.04's grub system, which Neon also uses.
You might boot to Mint and update grub (sudo update-grub), as perhaps the installer didn't set it up correctly, and if you can boot to Neon via the bios, you would need to do the same thing to make Neon's grub know about the new Mint install.

Yes Neon and Mint both are based on Ubuntu LTS 18.04. I did run the update-grub command in Mint, didn't help. I can't boot into Neon so..

stellarroar wrote:

claydoh wrote:Have you tried switching the boot order in your Bios to make Neon the primary boot OS?

Yes I tried that. KDE Neon was already at the top in the boot options order.

But you mention that you get Mint's grub, which may indicate that Mint has possibly overwritten neon.
can you access your neon drive/files?

Can you elaborate on this? I've never used any function key to boot an OS. I just select Neon from the menu and it gets stuck. Mint and Windows 10 boot without a hitch.

On most all computers, there is a function key to bring up the efi boot menu. On my PC I can hit the F9 key to bring up a menu to choose which OS (efi entry) to boot to, or to a USB OS install stick. This key is different from system to system, depending on the brand.

claydoh wrote:I don't know for sure what Mint does, but iirc it is using Ubuntu 18.04's grub system, which Neon also uses.
You might boot to Mint and update grub (sudo update-grub), as perhaps the installer didn't set it up correctly, and if you can boot to Neon via the bios, you would need to do the same thing to make Neon's grub know about the new Mint install.

Yes Neon and Mint both are based on Ubuntu LTS 18.04. I did run the update-grub command in Mint, didn't help. I can't boot into Neon so..

..so Mint has somehow messed up Neon in some way.
Can you access the drive/files for neon's file system from Mint?
What settings/method did you use to create the triple boot?