UEFI Motherboard dual boot/dual HDD

**oldfred** · January 14th, 2013

I have no idea how EasyBCD manages to boot Ubuntu.

but if you have started to boot you may need nomodeset or other boot parameters. With grub you press e on grub menu and replace splash quiet with nomodeset.

How to set NOMODESET and other kernel boot options in grub2 - both liveCD & first boot, but different
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1613132
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootOptions

**ronparent** · January 14th, 2013

My inspection of your boot info script shows that your system seems to need only a simple BIOS boot. It shows the boot loader on sdc? You do not appear to understand how grub functions and may have over complicated your installation. You have already apparently spent considerable time trying to untangle your system. Consider it time well spent a a learning exercise.

I suggest the simplest approach is for you to abandon your prior efforts and simply reinstall! Just make sure you this time install grub to the MBR of either sda or sdb and make sure the chosen drive is selected to boot first in the bios. A dedicated boot partition is unnecessary and only complicates your setup. Also the uuid of the partition you install on should also be the location of your kernel (ie /vmlinuz-3.5.0-17-generic root=UUID=.....etc). I see no reason why your system should not dual boot if grub is installed properly. A simple installation should require less than 20 minutes a clean up all your problems. Do select 'do something else' on the third screen and then select sda4 to install / to and sda or sdb to install the grub MBR to. Let us know how you make out.

**tdm** · January 14th, 2013

Originally Posted by ronparent

My inspection of your boot info script shows that your system seems to need only a simple BIOS boot. It shows the boot loader on sdc? You do not appear to understand how grub functions and may have over complicated your installation. You have already apparently spent considerable time trying to untangle your system. Consider it time well spent a a learning exercise.

I suggest the simplest approach is for you to abandon your prior efforts and simply reinstall! Just make sure you this time install grub to the MBR of either sda or sdb and make sure the chosen drive is selected to boot first in the bios. A dedicated boot partition is unnecessary and only complicates your setup. Also the uuid of the partition you install on should also be the location of your kernel (ie /vmlinuz-3.5.0-17-generic root=UUID=.....etc). I see no reason why your system should not dual boot if grub is installed properly. A simple installation should require less than 20 minutes a clean up all your problems. Do select 'do something else' on the third screen and then select sda4 to install / to and sda or sdb to install the grub MBR to. Let us know how you make out.

Thanks for the help.
I have reinstalled many times and have tried all those steps you suggested. They were the first things I did.

The overcomplication is just me trying to make it work. I put /boot partition on sdb (2TB HDD) as I couldn't boot from sda but I still wanted the OS installed on sda (SSD) for speed. That didnt work.

Also, you should have noticed that sdc in the Boot-Info is the USB drive I used to generate the Boot-Info. you said "the boot loader on sdc" as if it was the only boot loader in the system. Is this true? Has the ubuntu installer not been putting bootloaders on the SSD or HDD?

**dsv47** · January 14th, 2013

Your problem is a known issue with booting to an SSD from a Gigabyte motherboard. Try changing the SATA ports to AHCI in the BIOS settings and then reboot. Also, if you are normally booting to the SSD, you would want the SSD to be placed before the other HDD in the BIOS menu for setting the device boot order.

**tdm** · January 14th, 2013

Originally Posted by dsv47

Your problem is a known issue with booting to an SSD from a Gigabyte motherboard. Try changing the SATA ports to AHCI in the BIOS settings and then reboot. Also, if you are normally booting to the SSD, you would want the SSD to be placed before the other HDD in the BIOS menu for setting the device boot order.

It was at AHCI by default. And boot order is SSD first.

**tdm** · January 14th, 2013

Here's some progress:

Fedora 17 boots fine with chainloader +1 from Grub4Dos.
Yet with Xubuntu it says "Unsupported executable format".

**james2b** · January 14th, 2013

Okay I see then, and since you do not have Windows 8, and do dual boot with 7, then there is no need for the UEFI, you can try to set your system to that legacy standard BIOS with CSM enabled full at least it may be worth to try. Did you try to boot to a Ubuntu live CD or DVD to re-install grub2, such as; grub-install /dev/sda from terminal as sudo root ?

**tdm** · January 14th, 2013

Originally Posted by james2b

Okay I see then, and since you do not have Windows 8, and do dual boot with 7, then there is no need for the UEFI, you can try to set your system to that legacy standard BIOS with CSM enabled full at least it may be worth to try. Did you try to boot to a Ubuntu live CD or DVD to re-install grub2, such as; grub-install /dev/sda from terminal as sudo root ?

I will experiment with the BIOS options to see what one I should have enabled.
To install bootloader, I just reinstall ubuntu. Only takes 3 mins with good USB drive and SSD.

**ronparent** · January 14th, 2013

I really understand your frustration. I myself also have a Gigabyte MB and have spent days trying to install 12.10 to a raid0 - with NO success whatsoever! I had to finally resort to simply copying a 12.10 (&13.04) from a system installed to a pen drive! But I digress.

Just to warn you that in playing with my own 'BIOS' CSM settings I have been left with a non-functioning 3 beep MB and have had to remove the battery to reset it (the board does have a BIOS reset switch which didn't fix it for me). Then you have to re-enter all of your Prior BIOS changes. What a pain! Otherwise it is a great MB and very robust.

I hope that you have success in finding something that works. In my opinion your kind of problem should not exist and should be fixed in the distro.

**oldfred** · January 14th, 2013

I also suggest installing grub2's boot loader to the MBR. If you really do not want to remove Windows boot loader leave it and install grub to your other drive. But grub is designed to multi-boot where EasyBCD is modifying Windows boot loader and still using the Windows version of grub to boot.

Where did Fedora come in? That often installs to lvm and you have to install lvm2 driver and mount partition for grub to find lvm installs. Not sure grub4dos can do that.