Tried to install Linux Mint 18.1 Serena for Dual Boot - now Windows won't boot
 

Hello,

I have a new Acer Aspire E 15 laptop that came installed with Windows 10 and I wanted to create a dual boot with Linux Mint. I downloaded Linux Mint 18.1 Serena Cinnamon 64-bit and created a live usb drive using rufus. I also did a shrink volume on my C: drive to make sure I had plenty of room. I restarted my computer and turned off secure boot, which rebooted it. If I have the USB drive in the computer I can boot into mint (which I have not installed yet) and in mint I can see that I still have the windows boot files. However I am completely unable to boot Window. If I remove the USB drive I get a no Bootable Disk error. Windows is not listed as an option in grub or in my boot screen.
Did I accidentally ruin Windows on my PC? I bought this PC mainly for Windows games but I also do software development and I thought I would experiment with Linux. How can I get Windows 10 working on my PC again? Please advise!

Have you tried Boot Repair Disk?

https://sourceforge.net/projects/boot-repair-cd/

If you haven't installed Mint yet, how about going into the BIOS and changing the boot priority back from the usb drive from which you aare booting Mint to the hard drive where windows is. You do specifically state that you did NOT install Mint yet so I can't think of any other logical problem. Did you actually do more than boot Mint from the usb? I'm not sure why you would expect to see a Grub menu if you did not install Mint?

If you don't resolve this, get the boot repair software and run it and post the info here.

Incidentally, make sure you turn off fastboot and anything related to hibernation and also that you boot and install Mint the same as windows 10, probably UEFI.

@yancek, I have changed the boot priority back to the hard drive but mint still launches. Mint launched the first time and it has the "install mint CD" there, I clicked on it but did not complete the installation because it indicated it would destroy any other OS I had on the machine. When I reboot the machine if I'm in secure boot, the grub menu does show up. Maybe it did get installed? Is there a way to check if it did get installed? I'm very new to this so I am unsure. It looks like I will have to put the boot repair utility on a usb? I don't have another one right now so I'll go buy one today. I'm actually not certain how I'll make the drive as the only other computers I currently have access to are Macs...

yes, enter these commands:

It will take about 20-30 minutes for the installer to complete the installation so after clicking on the Install Mint icon, I guess it depends upon how long you let it run. You should also have had several options in the installer so which one did you choose? You should be able to use unetbootin which is suggested on the boot repair page as it has a version to run on a Mac.

Ok @yancek I definitely did not fully run the installer. I got to the screen with the choices and pressed cancel at that point. I should be able to run boot repair here soon and I will see what it tells me. Thank you for your help!

well the unetbootin is not working to create the liveUSB - keeps freezing when copying the files. My PC is basically a brick. Everything I read said that installing Linux would be easy. Apparently that is not true.

Now I was finally able to get the unetbootin to make the boot-disk-repair drive and nothing at all is happening when I try to boot from this drive. Just the flashing white underscore. I've gone into BIOS and changed the boot order and still nothing.

don't use unetbootin.
on windows, you can use e.g. http://rufus.akeo.ie/

@ondoho as I stated earlier I don't have access to any Windows PCs besides this broken one. Just Macs.

fact remains, unetbootin is broken.

noeladd,

See post #3 on:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...op-4175542837/

You need to set a Supervisor password temporarily, get Mint installed and then remove the password later.

No as I edited in the post above I was eventually able to get it to work. Interestingly when I re-enabled Secure boot I was finally able to get Boot Repair Disk to run and connect to the internet from there. I am attaching the readout I got from the Boot Repair Disk and will now try restarting the machine and see if I can get Windows to boot. Thanks for all your help!

@beachboy2 will this allow me to boot back into Windows? That is the main issue I am having right now. Honestly I'm about ready to give up on Linux all together. This is extremely frustrating.

To make a boot USB drivewhere the iso file is any live Linux or installation iso file (cd/dvd format). That command will write the iso as a bootable image on the USB drive. Mac OS has dd.

Looks like you did a n LVM install of Mint, sort of. Did you mean to do that? Do you know what LVM is? You basically have overwritten your windows with your attempt and have not come close to completing the install of Mint. Do you remember which installation type option you selected? It should have been the manual option which I believe Ubuntu/Mint calls "Something Else". The LVM install is defintely not the default so I'm not sure why you chose it.

Your windows was an EFI install, standard with pre-installed windows 8/10 and that's all you have left is the EFI partition. You don't have any Mint files showing in the EFI partition so it can't boot. You also don't show the standard files shown on the Linux partition (sda5). There is also no windows system partition.

The only sign of Grub is on the flash drive installer. I don't know what instructions you used but the site below gives pretty explicit instructions on dual booting Mint/windows 8/10 using UEFI. Mint is a pretty popular system and you should be able to find numerous detailed instructions on different sites if you don't like the one below. I've never used LVM so can't help with that. If you had personal data on the machine with windows, I hope you have a backup.
http://www.tecmint.com/install-linux...oot-uefi-mode/

The link below is to the Mint site with explanations of various installation types.

https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/2191

@yancek Thank you for the response. I was actually following similar instructions to what you linked when I did this last night. I had issues disabling the secure boot on my PC and couldn't get anything to boot for a while. Then the Mint boot worked when I switched secure boot back on. In Mint I got to the screen attached but it did not have the "Install Linux Mint alongside Windows Boot Manager" option, it just had "Erase disk and install Linux Mint" and the "Something else" option. I clicked the "Something else" but then the continue button was greyed out so I couldn't click it. It was at this point I quit the install and went back and tried to boot into Windows again. I am unsure how the LVM install happened. Fortunately this a new computer so the only things on it were games from Steam and no personal files. I'm not worried about file loss. I downloaded a Windows 10 recovery disk and I'm going to try to boot from that/reinstall Windows on the machine and then I will follow the instructions for the Dual Boot again. Thanks so much for your help.

In fact these are the exact instructions I was following. It was after this step
"Close Disk Management utility, place Linux Mint DVD or USB bootable image in the appropriate drive and reboot the computer in order to start with Linux Mint 18 installation.

In case you’re booting Linux Mint for installation from a USB dive in UEFI mode make sure you’ve created the bootable USB stick using a utility such as Rufus, which is UEFI compatible, otherwise your USB bootable drive won’t boot." that things went south.

How do I make sure Linux is installing on the correct partition? Would it be better for me to use a different Linux distro for dual booting? I'm not tied to Mint, just heard it was a good system for beginners.

Ok I've found the main issue. When I turn off secure boot, my Windows Boot Manager disappears and I can't boot Windows. Is there any Linux Distro I can use that doesn't require me to turn off Secure Boot (UEFI)?

Broke indeed.

Last 2 times I used it the distro wouldn't boot.

The last member I helped about 2 weeks ago had success with Rufus on his Windows machine.

If you don't see the "Install Alongside" option it is probably because you don't have unallocated space on which to install or you have left fastboot/hibernation on in windows 10. Mint or any Linux will not mount a hibernated ntfs. If you don't know what LVM is, you don't need it. You can clearly see that option in your image so make sure you don't select it. I don't use LVM but my understanding is that with the Ubuntu installer, if you select it it overwrites the disk and the explanation is not really clear on that.

There should not be any partition but rather unallocated space. You can create a partition in windows for Mint but it's kind of pointless as you will need to create a filesystem on that partition for it to be usable and you can't do that in windows. Just use unallocated space and create the partition/filesystem during your install.

If you want to try Ubuntu (Mint's daddy) you should be able to at least determine if you are booting UEFI. Documentation is at their site at the link below. I'm sure there are other OS's but I don't use UEFI so am not familiar with them.

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

Also, looking at your boot repair output again, there are no Mint files in the EFI partition where there are windows files. If you reinstall windows again and use UEFI then when you install Mint, you need to also install Mint UEFI. I don't use Mint so I'm not sure how you would determine that on boot. Make sure the settings in the BIOS are UEFI I guess.