Dual Booting Sony Vaio Issues

[k_d2]

Hello all,

For the past two days I have been trying to dual boot my Sony Vaio (Model: SVS1512DCXB). It came preinstalled with windows 8 and I upgraded to 8.1. Now I am looking at putting UbuntuGNOME 14.04.4 on it so I can stop running it in a virtual machine.

However, whenever I restart from the LiveCD my system ALWAYS boots stright into windows!!!

I have tried solutions from these links:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/458413/how-to-fix-dual-booting-windows-8-and-ubuntu-14-04-on-a-sony-vaio
and
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2227580&page=2
and even looked through this bug report:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/efibootmgr/+bug/1314759

For whatever reason nothing I do works!

Running boot-repair yields:
http://paste.ubuntu.com/15381809/

Not sure if I should go with the rEFInd route or if there is a fix now. Any suggestions???

[Bucky Ball]

refind has nothing to do with this. For Macs.

There is a key to press to get to the boot device menu at boot on most machines. Many times this key is F12.

Firstly, I suppose you are booting to the BIOS and changing the boot order to the USB? If that is what you're doing and that is not working, try hitting F12 at boot to get to that boot device menu (or whatever key it is on your machine) and choose the USB from there. This worked on my last machine where changing the BIOS boot order didn't for some odd reason.

The other 'burning' question is ... how did you create the live USB media? What software and what OS was it created on?

* Just checked your boot repair output. The odd thing is you seem to have Ubuntu installed already on sda11. And from the bottom of that output:


If your computer reboots directly into Windows, try to change the boot order in your BIOS.

Exactly what I suggested previously. :)

[k_d2]

Unfortunately VAIOs don't allow for changing the bootloader order.

The BIOS menu only allows me to change the boot order for an optical drive, HDD, network, or an external device. :(

[fantab]

From your BootInfo:

parted -l:

Model: ATA Hitachi HTS72757 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 750GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 274MB 273MB fat32 EFI system partition hidden
2 274MB 1819MB 1546MB ntfs Basic data partition hidden, diag
3 1819MB 2092MB 273MB fat32 EFI system partition boot
4 2092MB 2226MB 134MB Microsoft reserved partition msftres
5 2226MB 539GB 537GB ntfs Basic data partition msftdata
6 539GB 644GB 105GB ntfs Basic data partition msftdata
9 644GB 645GB 400MB ext2
10 645GB 663GB 18.0GB linux-swap(v1)
11 663GB 709GB 46.6GB ext4
7 709GB 710GB 832MB ntfs hidden, diag
8 710GB 750GB 40.0GB ntfs Basic data partition hidden, diag

Only one ESP is needed per HDD or per System. You have two. However only one has 'boot' flag. No real issue but why do you have two EFI Partitions? Did you create one, why?


BootOrder: 0001,0003,2001
Boot0000* EFI DVD/CDROM (MATSHITABD-CMB UJ167AM) ACPI(a0341d0,0)PCI(1f,2)03120a00040000000000CD-ROM(1,76fac,11c0)RC
Boot0001* Windows Boot Manager HD(3,363800,82000,6ffba630-c6fc-4d57-84bd-1a90b02043f2)File(EFIMicrosoftBootbootmgfw.efi)RC
Boot0003* Ubuntu HD(3,363800,82000,6ffba630-c6fc-4d57-84bd-1a90b02043f2)File(EFIubuntugrubx64.efi)RC

Windows is set as your first boot [0001] and Ubuntu boots next [0003]...
Now if you go back in your UEFI Menu you should be able to find Boot Order preferences or something like that.
Change that to Ubuntu... and you should be able to see the Grub Menu from where you either boot into Ubuntu or Windows...
Contacting Sony Service for directions may also help..

EDIT: If changing boot order is not an option then you can consider EasyBCD (https://neosmart.net/EasyBCD/), and alternative boot loader for Windows which boots linux as well.

[k_d2]

One of the partitions is just a back up in case I destroyed the other partition when I was moving files around. May have been over kill looking back but oh well lol

I guess I need to contact Sony and see if there is a way to change the boot loader order...

267811
FYI this is the menu I am working with for boot priority. If anyone wants more pics of the InsydeH20 layout I'll snap some more. It is really limited on options though

[oldfred]

Sony violates UEFI spec that says NOT to use description as part of UEFI boot.
And of course the only valid description is "Windows Boot Manager".
But there are work arounds.
Systems still have to boot hard drive or the fallback boot entry at /Boot/bootx64.efi.
So we make shimx64.efi be bootx64.efi and boot hard drive entry to get to grub.

Boot-Repair copies shim to bootx64.efi, but may not add entry in UEFI. If you have run updates in Boot-Repair try booting hard drive entry.

Details on manually copying files in link in my signature and many other links, of few:
External drive copy shim to bootx64.efi
http://askubuntu.com/questions/740290/installed-ubuntu-15-1-on-usb-full-install-but-it-wont-boot
https://bugs.launchpad.net/boot-repair/+bug/1531178
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2234019
Copy to /EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2247186
http://askubuntu.com/questions/150174/sony-vaio-with-insyde-h2o-efi-bios-will-not-boot-into-grub-efi
Sony, HP & others:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/486752/dual-boot-win-8-ubuntu-loads-only-win/486789#486789
https://askubuntu.com/questions/597052/can-not-boot-anymore-after-a-boot-repair
Rename bootx64.efi
https://askubuntu.com/questions/597052/can-not-boot-anymore-after-a-boot-repair

(https://askubuntu.com/questions/597052/can-not-boot-anymore-after-a-boot-repair)
One Sony user, dual booting, and boot hard drive UEFI entry, not ubuntu

The trick was to manually copy the ubuntu Boot directory in place of the \EFI\Boot Directory, and rename shimx64.efi to \EFI\Boot\bootx64.efi (not \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi )
Dual booting with Windows 8 on a Sony Vaio
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2153589




(https://askubuntu.com/questions/597052/can-not-boot-anymore-after-a-boot-repair)

[k_d2]

I thought Sony violating terms might be the case.

I contacted their customer support earlier today and was told that they do not offer support for dual booting a system... Go figure.............