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I have a laptop with both Windows 7 and Ubuntu 14.04 installed. Both OS were installed on UEFI mode and are 64 bits. Ubuntu 14 was installed using the upgrade option from Ubuntu 13.10. After the upgrade grub was broken and I couldn't boot anymore. I managed to get Windows to boot using the Repair Disc, but I can't get Ubuntu to boot using GRUB.

The first thing I tried then was using boot-repair, as I always did. But, somehow, with Ubuntu 14, boot-repair returns "An error has ocurred" and fails.

I have the boot-repair log at http://paste.ubuntu.com/8319294/

I hope this helps solving my problem as Ubuntu is my main system.

EDIT:

I have a separate EFI partition on my system.

Boot-repair gives an error "Wrong GRUB version detected. Please report this message to boot.repair@gmail.com"

EDIT:

I tried following the tutorial from https://superuser.com/questions/376470/how-to-reinstall-grub2-efi. Only Windows is booting, GRUB is being ignored.

EDIT:

After some time trying to figure out why GRUB is being ignored I found out something interesting. It seems my computer is looking for the Windows Boot Loader at \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi, no matter how I set the boot options using efibootmgr. Because of that, the only way I could consistently boot using GRUB was moving the Windows Boot Manager to another folder, but this breaks my GRUB configuration, making it impossible to boot Windows. It looks like a problem related to Intel's firmware, as you can see here. Now I'm stuck with no idea how to solve the problem.

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wisllayvitrio
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  • Try to re-install grub manually from a lived disk see this link for the full instructions http://howtoubuntu.org/how-to-repair-restore-reinstall-grub-2-with-a-ubuntu-live-cd – trve.fahad Sep 11 '14 at 14:48
  • I just tried that. During the first "grub-install" step it returns grub-install: error: cannot find EFI directory. Maybe this is caused because I have a separate EFI partiion on /dev/sda1 – wisllayvitrio Sep 11 '14 at 14:54
  • You do have a lot of changes to the UUID of your efi partition? REFInd is one of the work arounds but I do not know it. Other rename or work arounds: http://askubuntu.com/questions/507013/windows-8-1-changes-boot-order AND: http://askubuntu.com/questions/486752/dual-boot-win-8-ubuntu-loads-only-win/486789#486789 – oldfred Sep 17 '14 at 04:19
  • @oldfred , my EFI is almost intact. The only change I made was renaming \EFI\Windows\Boot to \EFI\Windows\EFI in order to get GRUB back. Since my laptop is a Sony Vaio, the links you provided will probably solve my problem. I'll update my status as soon as I get some results. – wisllayvitrio Sep 18 '14 at 01:23

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@oldfred Your links were very useful. I've opted for using the overwrite strategy from Dual boot Win 8 / Ubuntu loads only Win (plan B). Now I can fool my firmware and make it boot using GRUB instead of Windows Boot Manager, and select between Windows and Ubuntu from there. I only hope someday there will be a definitive way to solve this without any workarounds.

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wisllayvitrio
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  • Keep repair disks handy for both Windows & Ubuntu. If you have renamed the windows file, Windows updates may update that file back to Windows and you have to copy grub back again. Not the best situation, but about all we have when vendors do not follow UEFI standard that allows multi-boot and modify system to only boot Windows. – oldfred Sep 18 '14 at 03:29