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I bought a new HP laptop with Windows 8 to replace an old laptop running Ubuntu. Using Acronis I cloned the Ubuntu installation over to my new laptop... accidentally overriding the Windows installation.

No big deal, I thought. It was a new computer and I didn't have anything special on it so I popped a Windows 8 disc in the drive, and loaded onto my second partition.

Now, the computer only boots to Windows 8 and I have no idea how to get it boot to Ubuntu.

I have already turned off the UEFI and Secure Boot options from the BIOS but I have no idea where to go from here.

Braiam
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TheIronCheek
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  • Your original Windows 8 install was in UEFI with secure boot. Your old install of Ubuntu almost for sure was a BIOS boot install. Would have been better to reinstall Ubuntu in UEFI mode and copy /home and all data to Ubuntu from old install. But now do you have UEFI boot or BIOS boot. Best to post link to BootInfo report from Boot-Repair to know details. – oldfred Nov 26 '13 at 04:42

2 Answers2

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  • Try boot-repair,it would be the best option for repairing your grub.For this,you have to boot ubuntu-live disk or usb,and select try ubuntu.

  • A desktop like screen appears,press ctrl+alt+t,it would open up a terminal.Then run the below commands to install bootrepair,

    sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair && (boot-repair &)

  • After running the above commands,a boot-repair window will appears.Select Recommended Repair option.After successfull completion,restart your pc.Now it works.

Avinash Raj
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Avinash Raj's solution will probably work; however, a solution that's simpler (on the system level, maybe not for you as a user) is to type the following command in a Windows Administrator Command Prompt window:

bcdedit /set {bootmgr} path \EFI\ubuntu\grubx64.efi

This tells the firmware to boot GRUB rather than the Windows boot loader by default. This solution assumes, though, that Ubuntu was booting successfully before you installed Windows. If Ubuntu wasn't booting, it could be there's something wrong with the current GRUB configuration, in which case running Boot Repair or installing some other EFI boot loader may be necessary. Also, you may need to type sudo update-grub in a Terminal window once you've booted Ubuntu in order to add Windows to the GRUB menu.

Also, many EFIs provide their own boot managers. They're usually accessed by pressing Esc or a function key early in the boot process. If you're lucky, you'll find that both Windows and Ubuntu/GRUB are available options. You may even be able to adjust which one is the default in the firmware, although many EFIs lack that functionality. At the very least, though, this might be useful for a one-off Linux boot, whereupon you could use efibootmgr to fix the problem.

Rod Smith
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