12.xx Installer does not load while trying to create a Win8 Dual Boot with EFI

[guyfromfl]

Dark,

Thanks for the suggestion. I will give that a shot. I am at a loss for everything else.

I have tried installing with Secure Enabled and Disabled, Disabled is the only way I can get to the DVD's Grub menu, and Fast Boot and Legacy off.

In the boot menu, I select UEFI DVD, it will not let me select the Legacy options, since they are disabled.

Thank you so much for all your help, I will post back after I edit the boot optios!

PS To your Edit: I have ubuntu Rescue DVD and Boot-Repair says "Please connect to the internet. Continuing without internet will leave your system unbootable"

[darkod]

It's probably getting the grub efi packages from the net to purge it and reinstall it, or something like that. So, you might be stuck running it without net.

[guyfromfl]

I did it anyway and got an unbootable system, ran my Windows 8 restore discs and called it a night...

[darkod]

This is exactly what people were commenting when news started coming out about uefi, secure boot, and similar cr*p. That it will make dual booting hell. But no, MS said everything is fine, we are not trying to limit you to windows only...

On top of that, since years ago, they are not even giving you a DVD media with the OS you paid license for, only a useless restore partition. With a full windows DVD media, you can easily install it in legacy mode in 30mins.

You can try one thing, but you really shouldn't be wasting your time and energy doing any of this on a new machine that probably costed loads of money:
1. Make a windows rescue cd. There was one in win7, i hope there is in win8 too.
2. Then make a full backup of your win8. Separately, make a set of restore DVDs so that you have the original restore procedure when you delete the partition later.
3. Disable secure boot and uefi boot in bios.
4. Boot the machine with the ubuntu cd in live mode, create a new blank MSDOS table on the disk destroying all gpt partitions and table. Like it got faulty and you got a new disk. Create one ntfs partition on it with the size you want for the win8 system partition.
5. Restore the win8 backup to that partition. The tricky part is that the backup was from a uefi system, not legacy. And what type of boot files it has, or doesn't have.
6. If only boot files are missing, because it was in uefi boot earlier, the rescue cd should help restoring boot files and making it boot.

With any luck and a lot of wasted time, it might work.

After that there should be no problem installing ubuntu for legacy dual boot in the remaining of the hdd or depending how you want to organize it.

The trick is, should uefi backup work restored to legacy msdos partition???

[guyfromfl]

Dark,
I just reread the documentation for Boot Repair and found this disk:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Bo...ng_Boot-Repair

It looks like if I download #2 (Boot-Repair-Disk), it comes with everything I will need even if I do not have networking (as it doesn't support networking)! I'm going to give that a shot as well!
Edit to above..: Looks like it doesn't supprot WiFi devices not no networking :/ It's already burned so might as well give it a shot..

Edit: I'm going to try this disc, and if not, it looks like your dirty little way is my last resort. I had to purchase hp's recovery discs and created windows 8 restore discs..backed the entire hard drive up on an external, and luckily its a new machine so OS reinstalls aren't a ton of work restoring installed programs and data.

[YannBuntu]

Does anybody know why Boot-Repair REQUIRES internet!?

https://answers.launchpad.net/boot-r...uestion/218370

Probably you need a GRUB purge.

[guyfromfl]

YannBuntu,

Thank you for the link to answer my question.

Is there any reason a version of Grub can't "ship" with Ubunut-Recovery-Remix or the Boot-Repair CD's, and the CD be used as a repository?

I am asking out of pure ignorance.

[guyfromfl]

I give up on this thing.

hp and Microsoft ensured you cannot install an OS other than Windows8.

If you are looking for a computer and want to dual boot Windows and Linux, do not buy a P7-1417!

[oldfred]

Some mfgs have just made it more difficult, not sure if intentional or just they only think about Windows and do not care about any other use of computer.

Microsoft does require that you be able to turn secure boot off as part of their contract on secure boot with UEFI. And Ubuntu's version of grub2 with the 64 bit version of 12.10 actually is using the Windows key. But cheats a bit as it is called a shim to bridge from secure boot to grub.

Ubuntu has two versions of grub2 with 12.10. One is the standard BIOS boot grub-pc and the other is grub-efi. The version of grub-efi with older versions of Ubuntu has worked on UEFI without secure boot and the new version grub2 2.00 has worked with different vendors with secure boot systems.

If you accidentally install the BIOS version of Ubuntu, Boot-Repair will fix that by uninstalling grub-pc and installing grub-efi. But it needs an Internet connection (or you have to reconfigure to use DVD/Flash) to download grub-efi package. Many installs do not have the correct drivers for wireless, but almost all work with wired Ehternet so you can download the correct drivers.

[YannBuntu]

Is there any reason a version of Grub can't "ship" with Ubunut-Recovery-Remix or the Boot-Repair CD's, and the CD be used as a repository?

Good suggestion. AFAIK it is not possible to implement because Boot-Repair is designed to fix ALL versions of GRUB (whatever the GRUB version of the system to repair) so it would require to include many versions of GRUB (and all its dependencies, which are numerous) in the CD. Same problem when purging kernels. The Boot-Repair-Disk would not fit in a DVD any more...