Grub does not appear when installing ubuntu 12.10 with windows 8

[oldfred]

Are all files gone from efi partition? Early Ubuntu UEFI installs used to delete Windows efi and install its own efi, but that was fixed a year or more ago. Or did it just change default in UEFI back to Windows?
Do you have an entry in UEFI for efi shell? That also has many functions which I know little about.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UE...ing#UEFI_Shell

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...ace#UEFI_Shell
http://software.intel.com/en-us/arti...and-scripting/


You do not have a backup of the efi partition? If you ran Boot-Repair you actually do have a backup somewhere on your system of most if not all of it.

[dankpc]

Ok, so I've made a mistake here. They were not gone, I've just couldn't see them from the Live Ubuntu from USB.
But the files were changed somehow, I've sincerely don't know how.

So I've repeated the following: http://www.hackourlife.com/sony-vaio...-04-dual-boot/
Now, everything seems to work fine, booted multiples times to Ubuntu and Windows and so far so good.
Sincerely don't know why everything's working.

There were some little strange things though. I've had to manually mount Windows partition in ubuntu so I've could access it.
And in Sony Vaio computers, if you press the "Assist" button there're some options, like BIOS and Recovery System.
The Recovery option doesn't load, it says: failed to open \EFI\Boot\grubx64.efi
failed to load grub.
And nothing happens, but that's not such a problem since in the grub menu, there's a Windows 8 Boot Recovery (if I'm not wrong, it's something like this) that acess the Recovery option. So, not a big problem.
But I have no idea why this happened. Any thoughts?

I would like to mark this as SOLVED, but I ask for a day so I can test everything out.
Anyway, thank you so much, oldfred.
If there are no more problems, you helped a lot.
Thanks : D

[oldfred]

Glad it is working.

Is the issue with Windows because it always is hibernated? Linux NTFS does not want to open hibernated or NTFS needing chkdsk. If you have not booted Windows after a resize it can be the chkdsk (needed) flag. I always suggest smaller system partitions and separate /home or data partitions. With Windows 8 a NTFS data partition is important because of its hibernation issues.

Not sure if then your assit button is just booting the file in \EIFI\Boot and grub updated that to its file?

[dankpc]

Yes, it's because it always is hibernated, but I've already booted since the resize. Yeah, since I'm a little noob, i did not separate /home and stuff. Although I know it would be good.
Now, there's a way to fix or just leave it there and remount every time?

Uhh...not sure if I understood your second question. Apparently, grub updated the file so the assist would load the grub file, but it doesn't. Looking ah the grub file, the entries in grub menu that perform the same action the button would call the files /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bkpbootmgfw.efi and /EFI/Boot/bkpbootx64.efi
I didn't think the backup files would do that. Strange, but it seems to work.

[oldfred]

If you have a large / (root) you can shrink it from a live installer with gparted and create a NTFS data partition. If you shrink Windows use Windows disk tools and shink it and reboot.
I do not like creating partitions with Windows. With MBR and 4 partition limit it converts to dynamic which does not work with Linux. I have seen one user with gpt partitioning and Windows converted to dynamic when there is absolutely no reason to do that with gpt partitioning. So use gparted to create any partitions.

Every vendor and perhaps many models by vendor seem to have different UEFI implementations. Of course hardware differences make sense but all the other differences do not. Vendors are finding issues even with their Windows UEFI and also are making major updates to UEFI.

UEFI has a shell which is more like a command line tool. It can show you internal settings. Some UEFI include shell and you can download the UEFI shell from Intel. It might show you internal details you cannot see otherwise. BIOS was always assembly language to keep it tiny, UEFI is now C and uses drivers to implement hardware where BIOS used interrupts.

Launch EFI Shell from File System Device
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...ace#UEFI_Shell
http://software.intel.com/en-us/arti...and-scripting/

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UE...ing#UEFI_Shell