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The short: I accidentally installed 32bit 12.04, and choose to 'install boot loader' on the dev/sda (or 'main' the one that has all the memory) drive. Both windows and ubuntu work, only after changing BIOS/UEFI settings. But I want to redo the install and get 12.04 or 14 on the UEFI, will the previous installing of the 'bootloader' get in the way?

The long: Due to the foolish misreading of the ISO versions (64-bit PC (AMD64) desktop CD made me choose the intel option without reading all the descriptions, my first mistake) I tried to install 32-bit 12.04 on a new laptop. After hours of trying different USB setups and UEFI adjustments, it finally booted from the USB drive when changing the settings to legacy mode support. I had done research (not enough though) on where to put the 'bootloader' so that I wouldn't have to modify the MBR or other bios stuff afterwards, they advised me to put it on the overarching dev/sda that encompasses the whole system. So I did just that, made a decent partition for ubuntu, ran the install. Found out that it would not boot windows even though windows boot loader appears in the GRUB list of bootable options. I got around that issue but going back to the UEFI/BIOS setup and changing the option back to UEFI. So apparently the computer tries to boot up any UEFI loaders first. This is a kindof shoddy work around since I don't want to be shutting down, changing Boot Setup to legacy/UEFI, then restarting to get to a different OS. Plus that can't be the best for the computer.

I am aware if I re-install with 64bit ubuntu I will erase the partition with the 32bit, but I don't know what will happen to the GRUB/Bootloader thing I installed to the main partition.

Can I just ignore it?

Other details: Lenovo ideapad Z710 laptop

1 Answers1

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A UEFI install keeps bootloaders on the EFI System Partition, while an MBR install like you did before keeps one bootloader in MBR or unformatted BIOS_GRUB partition on GPT partition table.

No matter what you did before, if you re-install in UEFI mode no old and new bootloaders will interfere with each other. If you hadn't accidentally installed from 32-Bit installation media, you would even be able to just install the other bootloader setup and be able to boot (Ubuntu) both ways. (You can also boot Windows 8 in legacy mode if the BCD configuration is setup correctly to boot both ways.)

Probably related:

LiveWireBT
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