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I have a Windows 10 Home PC with a 1 TB Samsung SS drive in it. Windows made two partitions on the drive. One is only 500 MB. It is called "NTFS Healthy (System, Active, Primary partition)". It has no drive letter.

The other partition is my C drive, and it says "Healthy (Boot,Page File,Crash dump,primary partition)".

When I boot to a flash drive with Ubuntu, and run it with out loading it onto my computer, everything seems to run fine. When I click on the button in ubuntu to install it, I get a quick flash of an error message on my screen. I had to do this about 6/8 times because the error message is on my screen less than 1 second. The error message says "ERROR File "Boot" not found".

I wish to dual boot to Windows 10 & Ubuntu. After the quick error message above, I click on the button to install Ubuntu. It can not see my C drive and it can not see that I have Widows installed.

Yesterday, I tried to delete that small 500 MB partition with a partition tool. It said it would remove my Windows OS, if I did that to the 500 mg partition, but I did not believe it. But sure enough, after I deleted it, I could no longer boot to Windows and I had to do a new install from my Windows CD.

I tried to click further into the ubuntu install and found a screen that I could not understand. I believe it was showing me all the partition on my drive, but the screen was so cryptic, I could not understand any of it.

Can someone toss me a bone? Maybe a help file is around someone can refer me to? This is day two trying to do this install...

Thanks to all for the help and feedback.

mraroid, Oregon, US

user3284954
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  • Take a look at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation – ubfan1 Mar 28 '23 at 20:04
  • Is system UEFI or BIOS and then did you install Windows in UEFI boot mode? If Windows only had two partitions that probably is BIOS with very old MBR partitioning. First partition is Windows boot. But if UEFI, then first partition is the ESP for UEFI booting of all systems. Microsoft has required vendors to install in UEFI/gpt mode since 2012, so unless system is very old it should have UEFI installs. – oldfred Mar 28 '23 at 20:38
  • I’m not sure the advice in the answer / comments below the answer are very helpful. I think the main thing you need to do - when installing windows - is leave some unallocated space - that is then used by the Ubuntu installer to install the os. Ubuntu doesn’t use the idea of ‘c’ and ‘d’ drives etc - you need some unused space on the drive for the Ubuntu file system. If you don’t have empty space on your drive, you’ll need to shrink your windows partition or (probably easier if a new installation) reinstall windows without using all the space on the drive. – Will Mar 28 '23 at 21:02
  • oldfred.... My computer is from around 2014. The BIOS is very basic. I found nothing in the BIOS that said UEFI. But I suspect it is and that is why I have two partitions ESP (the smaller one) and the other partition, which is very large is my C drive with Windows 10 installed. – user3284954 Mar 28 '23 at 21:44
  • See the answer to Preparing a disk from Windows for installing Ubuntu (partitioning). You don't format the free space in Windows don't use NTFS of any other type of format. If you do not format the free space, you won't be able to give it a drive letter (Z:). That is fine. Ubuntu does not care about the drive letters. – user68186 Mar 28 '23 at 21:51
  • I have been reading this: https://medium.com/linuxforeveryone/how-to-install-ubuntu-20-04-and-dual-boot-alongside-windows-10-323a85271a73 When I try to do the install & move forward with it, it never shows Windows 10. But I do see the two partitions - the smaller ESP/UEFI partition & the larger one for Windows 10. Using the guide linked above, I divided my C drive into two parts each about 400 GBs or so. I tried to install ubuntu in the new empty partition. I get an error message that says I am missing an EFI partition. That is not addressed in the link above. Thoughts? Many thanks – user3284954 Mar 28 '23 at 21:51

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Disclaimer I am myself no expert, but did these installing, booting, dual booting things a couple of times...

So First, can you please share a picture of what you mentioned as the cryptic screen. If am correct you are now very close to doing a dual boot, from the cryptic screen, you just needed to choose a correct partition on you hard disk, where your ubuntu will be installed.

But before you can select a partition to install Ubuntu on. You will have to first create it if it's not there already. Because as you said in windows there was only two partitions one the 500 MB one and other for the C drive. So using the disk partition application in windows you should first create a new partition by shrinking the size of your C drive partition and then you should create a new partition out of the free space that got formed after shrinking C drive.

Also you can try creating the bootable USB (for ubuntu installation) again.

Yugal
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  • Thank you for helping me. I can not post a screen grab of the error message because it comes on the screen then goes away in less than 1 second. – user3284954 Mar 28 '23 at 20:06
  • So, using Windows 10 Home, I can take my C partition and then split it in 1/2 lets say. Do I give the new partition a drive letter? And if I do that, and then boot to my flash drive, do I direct the install to the new partition with the new drive letter? Thank you again for your help! mraroid – user3284954 Mar 28 '23 at 20:08
  • Yes when you will split the C drive, you will have to assign the newly created partition a name or it will by default take some name (e.g. new volume...), Then yes, you direct the install to newly created partition. – Yugal Mar 28 '23 at 20:17
  • But the problem in your case is, when you were trying to install Ubuntu, it was not detecting windows being already installed... But if it could have detected then we may need not to such a long excercise of making partitions, as it by default would have given us a option to dual boot ubuntu alongside windows, and then rest all the work it will do itself, no need to create partitions beforehand, and this one is the most preferred way also. – Yugal Mar 28 '23 at 20:19
  • So when you just click on install Ubuntu from your bootable USB, after some steps elapsed, you should reach a page asking you something like whether you want to install it along .., manual install..., Something else..., Does such page appear? – Yugal Mar 28 '23 at 20:27
  • The screen I see has two choices - 1) Erase disk and install Ubuntu. 2) Something else. I select 2. The next screen does not say anything about Windows anyplace. But I see two things: /dev/sda 1 NTFS, 524 MBs. I also see: /dev/sda 2 NTFS 451918 Mbs. I also see: Free Space 547761 Mbs. I have been trying to install Ubuntu on the 547761 space but no joy. – user3284954 Mar 28 '23 at 21:59
  • I am trying to follow this install guide: https://medium.com/linuxforeveryone/how-to-install-ubuntu-20-04-and-dual-boot-alongside-windows-10-323a85271a73 But I can only select the free space partition twice. And when I try to do the install, I get an error message that I need to make a EFI partition, but I am unable to do so. The partition stuff is grayed out. – user3284954 Mar 28 '23 at 22:02
  • I will toss another day or two into this. If I can not get it to work, I will wipe out Windows 10 and make the computer Ubuntu only. But I have stuff that I use Windows 10 for and hate to loose it. I will keep trying. Read yet another ubuntu install guide. I am doing everything they say as well, but no joy. Ubuntu works fine from the flash drive (not installed onto the hard drive). WiFi, ethernet, Web cam, etc. I could not find any issues... – user3284954 Mar 28 '23 at 22:35
  • Ok, I am getting your problem, (I also saw the online article you have mentioned). You have to further create new partitions out of the free space you have. Are you able to do this.?, can you please elaborate more on which button are greyed out on this screen? – Yugal Mar 29 '23 at 15:38
  • Although I am very sure you will eventually be able to install ubuntu as you want (just a few small know-how, that you get on here and the internet). But if somehow you have to use ubuntu from a flash drive everytime, that may not suit your needs for which you need ubuntu, because you will not be store anything permanently on the flashdrive, i.e. if you tommorow again plug in your flash drive and try to open a browser/other software that you installed yesterday, you will not find it anywhere, it removed the very instant you plugged out your flash drive yesterday, – Yugal Mar 29 '23 at 15:40
  • Although I am very sure you will eventually be able to install ubuntu as you want (just a few small know-how, that you get on here and the internet). But if somehow you have to use ubuntu from a flash drive everytime, that may not suit your needs for which you need ubuntu, because you will not be store anything permanently on the flashdrive, i.e. if you tommorow... (continued in my next comment) – Yugal Mar 29 '23 at 15:51
  • …again plug in your flash drive and try to open a browser/other software that you installed yesterday, you will not find it anywhere, its removed the very instant you plugged out your flash drive yesterday, and now its again a fresh ubuntu installation. A work-around trick can be that you store your documents etc. (i.e. the work you do /created while using ubuntu through flash drive), onto your windows C: drive partition. As you will be able to access (read and write) files onto your windows C: partition from the flash drive ubuntu itself. – Yugal Mar 29 '23 at 15:52
  • Thanks to all who tried to help me. I have given up. I am going to re format my new Samsung SS drive, re install it in the computer, and just install Ubuntu - no more windows 10. Again, many thanks to all.... mraroid – user3284954 Mar 29 '23 at 21:20