pre-installed Windows 8 boot fails after Xubuntu 13.10 boot fixed

[silentstone]

I would like to dualboot Xubuntu 13.10 and Windows 8 from the GRUB2 menu without reinstalling Windows 8; I don't have any Windows reinstall media besides the Recovery partition on the internal HDD.

I'm not new to Linux or Ubuntu or dualbooting, but the UEFI stuff confounded me; so, I picked my way through the initial installation of Xubuntu 13.10 on an Asus laptop with Windows 8 64-bit pre-installed. Nevertheless, I ran into a problem immediately in that the Installer never detected the Windows installation. I chose the 'Something Else' option and manually configured some partitions behind the Windows, keeping the Linux boot partition separate from Windows's, and I may have assigned a 'boot' flag to Linux's boot partition.

On reboot, Windows 8 booted immediately with no sign of Linux. However, after fiddling with the System Setup and manually pointing to Linux's .efi files, Xubuntu booted. But now, no Windows boot.

Currently, all the Windows boot features were disabled (FastBoot, hibernation), the single hard drive is UEFI set, SecureBoot-enabled, boot manager is GRUB2 with functioning Linux entries and non-functioning Windows entries. Boot-Repair was installed and run from the HDD-installed Xubuntu system; I only used it to generate a BootInfo Summary here: http://paste.ubuntu.com/8273250/

Some things stand out: sda5 reports two different starting points, a warning about the Linux boot partition being too far from the disk's start...

But where do I go from here?

[yancek]

You can set the boot flag on the windows partition with GParted. I don't use EFI so can't help with that. I wouldn't put too much effort into it as Xubuntu 13.10 is not longer supported and you won't be able to get updates or new software using the standard methods.

[silentstone]

The Linux installation is important: I keep all my stuff there :) IIRC, there can only be one boot-flagged partition on a GPT drive; if Windows is it, all the Linux access will be lost at boot because the Windows boot manager doesn't list the Linux at all.

But I know the Windows boot files are still functional because the pre-OS/System Setup's boot menu (F12 on boot) points to a functional "Windows Boot Manager" entry! Which I just discovered. Anyway, does that make GRUB the problem?

[fantab]

parted -l:

Model: ATA ST500LT012-9WS14 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 420MB 419MB ntfs Basic data partition hidden, diag
2 420MB 735MB 315MB fat32 EFI system partition boot
3 735MB 869MB 134MB Microsoft reserved partition msftres
4 869MB 87.1GB 86.3GB ntfs Basic data partition msftdata
5 87.1GB 87.4GB 276MB fat32 Basic data partition boot
6 87.4GB 473GB 386GB ext4 Basic data partition msftdata
9 473GB 481GB 8277MB linux-swap(v1)
7 481GB 482GB 367MB ntfs hidden, diag
8 482GB 500GB 18.3GB ntfs Basic data partition hidden, diag

Remove the 'boot' flag from the 5th data partition...
There can be only one ESP [EFI system partition], your attempt to create a second fat32 5th partition was in vain.


efibootmgr -v
BootCurrent: 0005
Timeout: 2 seconds
BootOrder: 0005,0001,0000,0002
Boot0000* Windows Boot Manager HD(2,c8800,96000,6af53f04-90f4-4d4c-ad70-aa398c633b66)File(EFIMicrosoftBootbootmgfw.efi)WIN DOWS.........x...B.C.D.O.B.J.E.C.T.=.{.9.d.e.a.8.6 .2.c.-.5.c.d.d.-.4.e.7.0.-.a.c.c.1.-.f.3.2.b.3.4.4.d.4.7.9.5.}...}................
Boot0001* HDD0: HD(2,c8800,96000,6af53f04-90f4-4d4c-ad70-aa398c633b66)File(EFIubuntugrubx64.efi)RC
Boot0002* xubuntu ACPI(a0341d0,0)PCI(1f,2)03120a00000000000000HD(2,c 8800,96000,6af53f04-90f4-4d4c-ad70-aa398c633b66)File(EFIubuntugrubx64.efi)A01 ..
Boot0004* MATSHITA DVD-RAM UJ8E1 BIOS(3,500,1f)................-...........A......#............................... ....
Boot0005* ubuntu HD(2,c8800,96000,6af53f04-90f4-4d4c-ad70-aa398c633b66)File(EFIubuntushimx64.efi)


Recommended-Repair
This setting would reinstall the grub-efi-amd64-signed of sda6, using the following options: sda2/boot/efi,
Additional repair would be performed: unhide-bootmenu-10s fix-windows-boot

Run the 'Recommended-Repair' offered by Boot-Repair tool it can fix some minor Windows boot issues.

However if you have discovered the one-time-boot key to boot Windows and are happy with it..... then so be it.
No issues.

[Bucky Ball]

I hope you have some luck, but just thought I'd direct you to this for future reference:

EOL release recommendations:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2229730

13.10 is no longer supported and there will not be much support available here, if any, if you have problems specifically related to it. Better to go with 14.04 LTS, a long-term support release supported until April 2019.