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So recently I decided I'd start learning Linux, having 10+ years experience with Windows and feeling quite competent with that OS. I got a 500gb external HDD, formatted it etc with Rufus and created a persistent, bootable USB installation of Ubuntu 14.04 (I later upgraded it to 14.10). This has worked great with my workstation PC, have not had any issues whatsoever and have been in love with the snappiness of Linux. However, when I try to boot that same working installation on pretty much any other computer (tried it with two lab computers at my office as well as my laptop) I get an "Operating system not found" error. I would love some advice as to how to get this install bootable on other PCs as I intend on using it to diagnose and clean Windows installations that are not in a workable state.

Sykriss
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  • I ran boot-repair and that only created more problems... Now I cannot boot into my workstation PC's Windows installation without having the external HDD plugged in. It boots into a terminal, which it did before; however, doing what I used to do to get into windows (typing exit) causes a quick flash of a few lines of "Failed:" then right back to terminal.

    Boot-repair pastebin: http://paste.ubuntu.com/10657439/

     – Sykriss Mar 23 '15 at 04:01

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Sorry for posting this as an answer, but the comments are too small to say what I need to say... :(

You had a GPT on your /sda and a MBR on your /sdb... It's not a huge problem, but is the origin of your original problem: effectively, the UEFI boot partitions on the other computers in your lab didn't know about the Ubuntu boot loader as they are missing the necessary information from their boot partitions... This has nothing to do with Ubuntu but is purely firmware related.

The solution to your original problem would have been something like this...

However, in the mean time, you've run a boot repair which very probably saw a MBR partition and tried to repair that, instead of a GPT one... So now neither Windows nor Ubuntu boot.

The solution now would be to boot-repair Windows and by now you know more of the Windows 8 boot process (UEFI started with Windows 7 but was optional, with Windows 8 it's recommended and with Windows 10 it will be enforced) so you should have a better shot at re-installing Ubuntu in UEFI mode so it can boot on your machine and all the others in the lab. ;-)

Last piece of advice: If you're looking for an easy fix, make a BIOS-bootable Ubuntu install on the external HD, turn UEFI off and boot from BIOS whenever you need to clean stuff and turn UEFI back on after you've finished. For the foreseeable future, BIOS boot will still be available on all machines.

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