[SOLVED] linux mint/windows 7 dual boot issue

danutzdobre · 01-17-2016, 03:51 PM

Hello,

I am trying to get a dual boot with Windows 7 and Linux mint.
My system is an HP EliteBook 2560p.
I had windows 7 installed EFI.
I booted Linux mint live in EFI mode from USB and installed it on my hard drive. Instalation went ok, with no warnings or errors.
After reboot the laptop boots directly in Windows.

I have tried to boot from USB again in linux mint and to install grub but i get the error "grub-probe: error: failed to get canonical path of `/cow'"
I have searched and did not find anything that works. (I am new with linux).

Can you help me add Linux as a second boot option? I do not care if it is by using grub or using other windows boot application.

-I have tried grub-update or grub install but i get same /cow error.
-Someone suggested to install grub2 on mbr. Is this safe when both are installed EFI? How do i do that? Will i be able to boot both windows and linux if i do that?
-I tried deactivating the UEFI boot and windows did not start either. No OS was visible on start.

Thank you.
Danut

offgridguy · 01-17-2016, 05:59 PM

I cannot help you much as I have never dual-booted using UEFI, However I would recommend DO NOT install grub 2 on MBR, as UEFI indicates you are already installed to a GPT partition table.

syg00 · 01-17-2016, 07:20 PM

Probably simply a default boot issue. When the systems reboots, interrupt the boot immediately the screen goes blank and get into the (UEFI) boot list.
There should be an entry for "Ubuntu" (IIRC - not Mint). Select that, and it should boot into your Mint. Once there you can change the default boot entry using efibootmgr - the manpage has all the info you need. Here is what the manpage shows as an example

Code:

[root@localhost ~]# efibootmgr
       BootCurrent: 0004
       BootNext: 0003
       BootOrder: 0004,0000,0001,0002,0003
       Timeout: 30 seconds
       Boot0000* Diskette Drive(device:0)
       Boot0001* CD-ROM Drive(device:FF)
       Boot0002* Hard Drive(Device:80)/HD(Part1,Sig00112233)
       Boot0003* PXE Boot: MAC(00D0B7C15D91)
       Boot0004* Linux

yancek · 01-17-2016, 07:48 PM

Quote:

Can you help me add Linux as a second boot option? I do not care if it is by using grub or using other windows boot application.

I don't know of any windows app that will boot any Linux although there is third party software such as EasyBCD. I don't know if it will work with UEFI. Booting Mint in UEFI was correct. If windows is UEFI, then Mint must also be. Some General Principles explain it at the link below:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI

Boot the Mint install medium and mount the EFI partition to take a look at it. You should have files there for both windows and Mint. The Mint files will be named ubuntu as pointed out above. I would suggest you use the Mint install medium and go to the site below and use the instructions to get boot repair. After running it, post a link to the output here.

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

I would suggest you try the method suggested by syg00 above before doing the boot repair.

danutzdobre · 01-18-2016, 12:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by syg00

Probably simply a default boot issue. When the systems reboots, interrupt the boot immediately the screen goes blank and get into the (UEFI) boot list.
There should be an entry for "Ubuntu" (IIRC - not Mint). Select that, and it should boot into your Mint. Once there you can change the default boot entry using efibootmgr - the manpage has all the info you need. Here is what the manpage shows as an example

Code:

[root@localhost ~]# efibootmgr
       BootCurrent: 0004
       BootNext: 0003
       BootOrder: 0004,0000,0001,0002,0003
       Timeout: 30 seconds
       Boot0000* Diskette Drive(device:0)
       Boot0001* CD-ROM Drive(device:FF)
       Boot0002* Hard Drive(Device:80)/HD(Part1,Sig00112233)
       Boot0003* PXE Boot: MAC(00D0B7C15D91)
       Boot0004* Linux

Can you please give me more details on how to do this? On restart Windows boots by default. How do i stop windows from booting to get into the UEFI boot list?

@yancek i will give it a look after i get a reply from @syg00 and try his advice as you suggested

Thank you

syg00 · 01-18-2016, 05:57 PM

Depends on hardware - if you have a user guide look in there. Sometimes you'll see a line on the initial screen specifying which key to hit. Else just try a few - Esc, F2, F10 or F12 are common, although it might even be the Del key.

zrdc28 · 01-18-2016, 11:40 PM

A quick and easy way to do this is to download super grub and burn it to a CD. Boot & start super grub. It will correct and create a boot up for mbr. it will offer to boot linux or windows or both.

danutzdobre · 01-19-2016, 05:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by syg00

Depends on hardware - if you have a user guide look in there. Sometimes you'll see a line on the initial screen specifying which key to hit. Else just try a few - Esc, F2, F10 or F12 are common, although it might even be the Del key.

Oh, I thaught you were talking about another menu to show me the boot options.

On my laptop I hit Esc to open the first menu with all the bios options (EFI). There is no manu entry to see what system to load.

I reinstalled Linux from the Linux live UBS and i placed the Boot loader on the Linux partition (don't want to replace MBR). I then created a partition (fat32) and extracted the first 512 kb in a file to that partition and went to windows and tried to add it to the EFI menu as an option. I can see the option now but Linux will not boot. i will post more details today when i get back home and continue to investigate.

yancek · 01-19-2016, 07:20 AM

Quote:

I then created a partition (fat32) and extracted the first 512 kb in a file to that partition

You should already have an EFI partition if you had windows installed EFI and that is where the Linux files. Post the output from boot repair and don't try to do any repairs but select Create BootInfo Summary.

danutzdobre · 01-19-2016, 02:03 PM

Did not try the BootInfo summary yet because i need to do that from linux.

I tried this
https://www.iceflatline.com/2009/09/...using-bcdedit/

That's why i created a fat32 partition. But apparently did not work.

yancek · 01-19-2016, 06:48 PM

The FAT32 partition suggested in the link you posted is simply for sharing data between windows and Linux. It could be ntfs. It has nothing to do with booting. It also explains how to boot a Linux from windows installed using MBR and not EFI so I don't see how that will help in your situation.

syg00 · 01-19-2016, 07:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by danutzdobre

On my laptop I hit Esc to open the first menu with all the bios options (EFI). There is no manu entry to see what system to load.

There must be somewhere - on one of my machines I get a list of options after <Esc>, one of which is F9 to list boot options. From there I can select which system to boot.

Quote:

Did not try the BootInfo summary yet because i need to do that from linux.

Run it from a live/install CD/USB - we can't help you if we don't have hard data rather than guess-work.

Also (from the Linux liveCD) run this and show us the output

Code:

 [ -d /sys/firmware/efi ] && echo UEFI || echo BIOS

danutzdobre · 01-20-2016, 11:30 AM

I logged into Mint live and ran

Code:

[ -d /sys/firmware/efi ] && echo UEFI || echo BIOS

the result was UEFI

Then I installed the BootRepair and ran a check. The results are here: http://paste2.org/GOWI4GYY

Should i do a repair?

yancek · 01-20-2016, 02:41 PM

You indicated in an earlier post that you had disabled EFI. Have you re-enabled it? If not, you need to. You have no boot code in the MBR which is correct and you do also have both windows and Mint files in sda1 which is the EFI partition. I notice that none of the windows partitions is marked active/bootable which is usually required, at least with MBR. I'm not sure with EFI. Someone with more knowledge of it will have to advise you.

danutzdobre · 01-20-2016, 02:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by yancek

You indicated in an earlier post that you had disabled EFI. Have you re-enabled it? If not, you need to. You have no boot code in the MBR which is correct and you do also have both windows and Mint files in sda1 which is the EFI partition. I notice that none of the windows partitions is marked active/bootable which is usually required, at least with MBR. I'm not sure with EFI. Someone with more knowledge of it will have to advise you.

I have disabled EFI because someone told me to try. Doing that my laptop did not boot at all. No windows and no Linux available. I had to enable it for my Windows to work.