Hi, I installed Ubuntu 15 alongside my existing Ubu 14. Setting the bios to boot from usb stick, I accidently pressed f4, which causes this Samsung laptop to recover Win 8.1. It did, and Win started again. Then I installed Ubu 15 from the pen drive.

grub.cfg contains this entry, which does nothing, not even an error message, a ticking cursor is all I get.

menuentry 'Windows Recovery Environment (loader) (on /dev/sda6)' --class windows --class os $menuentry_id_option 'osprober-chain-4EFC-0A8F' {
insmod part_gpt
insmod fat
set root='hd0,gpt6'
if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root --hint-bios=hd0,gpt6 --hint-efi=hd0,gpt6 --hint-baremetal=ahci0,gpt6 4EFC-0A8F
else
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 4EFC-0A8F
fi
drivemap -s (hd0) ${root}
chainloader +1
}

This is the entry I have in grub.cfg from Ubu 14. I tried pasting this in Ubu 15 grub.cfg, which is the one that boots this computer, but I get an error 'no such device'

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ###
menuentry 'Windows Boot Manager (on /dev/sda2)' --class windows --class os $menuentry_id_option 'osprober-efi-34F6-50C3' {
insmod part_gpt
insmod fat
set root='hd0,gpt2'
if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root --hint-bios=hd0,gpt2 --hint-efi=hd0,gpt2 --hint-baremetal=ahci0,gpt2 34F6-50C3
else
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 34F6-50C3
fi
chainloader /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
}
set timeout_style=menu
if [ "${timeout}" = 0 ]; then
set timeout=10
fi
### END /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ###

Here is a shot of gparted, in case someone can see the problem.

Thing is, I need Win for my online bank. It will only work with IE and Windows!!

I just updated Ubu, and it ran update-grub. There were some error warnings about wrong magic numbers. I don't know where to find that log. It may point at the problem. I ran sudo apt-get upgrade

Attached Thumbnails

 

Sorry buddy, can't help you with your boot problems. But:
If my bank FORCED me to use IE, I would switch bank! No, really, I would.

Anyway, if that is not an option for you, why don't you install Windows in a virtual machine (Virtual Box), and use Ubuntu as your main OS?
The ONLY time I use Windows and IE is when I upgrade my GPS, due to a horrible piece of software written by moronic developers at Garmin, that forces me to. And for that matter, and that matter only, I have a Virtual Box installation of Win7.

I would never dual boot for something like this, but maybe that's just me.

Best regards,
HMW

The first windows entry you have is a standard chainloader entry while the second one points to an EFI partition. Which did you use? Generally, you will have problems if you do not install all systems EFI or all systems MBR. Mixing the two generally produces the results you are seeing. Boot Ubuntu and go to the site below and download the boot repair software and run in by selecting the option to Create BootInfo Summary. Post the results here as the file will contains details about drives/partitions/boot files.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair

@yancek Will do. Before I tried to install Ubu 15, everything was working fine.

@HWH I am not a computer man, I don't know what a virtual box is. Can you give me a link?

Well, I'm not HWH, but VirtualBox is a virtual machine manager from Oracle:
https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Additionally, if you hardware supports hardware virtualization (most Intel i3's and up, or their AMD equivalents), you might try KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine) and Aqemu (a graphical front end for it [& QEMU]). They should be available in your distro's repositories (look in your package manager app).

Neither am I ;-)

But I stand fully behind your explanation and the link!

So, some progress, some problems.

Here is the output of Boot Repair, maybe you can make sense of it

http://paste.ubuntu.com/12105967/

When I started Boot Repair in Ubu15, it ran for a while then came up with something like 'you are running in legacy mode, make a boot stick and boot from that' So I downloaded the Boot Repair 64 iso, and using Disk Writer wrote it to the same usb stick which I used to install Ubu 15, I know that one works. Except it didn't. In Ubu15, I can see the contents of the stick, a Ubu system. gparted sees nothing, says this is unallocated space. The bios sees an innostar usb stick, but will not boot from it.

Ho hum!

I just discovered the the bios was set to csm. I have 3 choices: csm, uefi and uefi + csm

When I set the bios to uefi, Windows boots. I have no choice, even if I have a bootable stick inserted at boot. If I set to csm, windows will not start. If I set the bios to uefi+ csm I see the link to win recovery loader, which does nothing.

Any of this make sense to you?

I cannot get it to boot from the boot repair stick, whatever bios mode I choose.

Here's the thing:

I got UNnetbootin, made a boot stick from the boot-repair-disk-64bit.iso which I got from sourceforge.

I can boot from this if I set the bios to csm. However, when I run boot repair, it very quickly comes up with 'The boot of your pc is in Legacy mode, please change it to EFI mode'

So I reboot, go to the bios, set the os mode to uefi. Only Windows will boot, there are no other choices, even when the boot stick is present.

How can I boot in EFI mode with this boot repair stick?

Ubuntu will boot into UEFI use the ubuntu disk to repair grub. You may have to chroot or boot the cd in rescue mode.

If I set UEFI mode, only win will boot.

That is the only choice in the boot sequence apart from disable. Even when I put disable, win still boots.

I do not get a choice of booting from a disk or usb stick, even if they are present.

I made 2 usb sticks with UNetbootin, a boot repair usb stick, and a Ubu15 usb stick. Neither will boot if I set the bios to UEFI. If I change to UEFI + CSM, I can boot them. They start. But apparently, they start in CSM mode.

If I then start Boot Repair, it says: The boot of your PC is in Legacy Mode, please change it to EFI mode. Abort

If I change it to UEFI mode, the repair stick will not boot.

Any way out of this??

If you look at the screenshot I posted of gparted, you will see somme nasty warning signs next to /dev/sda3, 7 and 10 I think that is the problem, but I don't know how to resolve it.

It's probably listed in hdd's, not usb. Go back to bios & check.

Checked everything I can find. In UEFI mode, it is only possible to boot Win. There are no other choices.

I have fast bios mode = disabled, secure boot = disabled

I remade a boot repair usb stick with UNetbootin. It boots when I set the mode to UEFI + CSM. The I get the error

(initramfs) mount: mounting /dev/loop0 on //filesystem.squashfs failed: invalid argument

Can not mount /dev/loop0 (cdrom/casper/filesystem.squashfs) on //filesystem.squashfs

Tried all the options in the initial boot repair menu, same result, including failsafe.

Following instructions from the link https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair I used apt-get on a Live usb stick Ubuntu15 to get Boot Repair and then ran it.

I cannot boot the usb stick Live iso in UEFI mode. If I set UEFI mode, only Win boots. So I set boot mode UEFI + CSM The boot stick boots, I run Ubuntu, Boot Repair runs for a while then says:

"The current session is in Legacy mode. Please reboot the computer, and use this software in an EFI session. This will enable this feature. For example, use a live-USB of Boot-Repair-Disk-64bit (www.sourceforge.net/p/boot-repair-cd), after making sure your BIOS is set up to boot USB in EFI mode."

Question: with the boot mode set to UEFI + CSM is it possible to force the system to boot UEFI? Only then will I be able to run Boot Repair and maybe then it will do its stuff.

Iwas going over your previous posts & notice that you're trying to write to the usb that is in use. I'm not sure that you can do that even tho you're in a live session.