-1

so I am dual-booting windows 8.1 and ubuntu 15.04 and for some reason GRUB2 stopped loading and it just goes straight to windows so i booted from the ubuntu live cd to reinstall grub2. i found the location of the partition with ubuntu which is /dev/sda5 so the commands i typed in was, "sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt" and then i type, "sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda" and with my desktop that works but it has a bios, my laptop doesn't. the error that it gives me is " grub-install: warning: this GPT partition label contains no BIOS Boot Partition; embedding won't be possible. grub-install: warning: Embedding is not possible. GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists. However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged.. grub-install: error: will not proceed with blocklists. "any help would be great! i've looked everywhere with no luck. thanks!

Christopher Champion
  • 339
  • 2
  • 5
  • 11
  • Your Windows and probably Ubuntu are installed in UEFI mode, not BIOS. If booting Ubuntu in BIOS mode on a gpt partitioned drive you do need that bios_grub partition. What brand/model system. You should be able to go into UEFI boot menu or one time boot key and boot ubuntu entry. But some vendors modify UEFI to only boot Windows. – oldfred Apr 08 '15 at 21:52
  • @oldfred: see comment below. – Fabby Apr 12 '15 at 13:00

1 Answers1

-1

I figured out what to do.. Btw I have a Toshiba Satellite s55-b5280. All i did was go to change pc settings in Windows, then click update and recovery, then recovery, then under advanced startup, click restart now. After it restarts, a menu will pop up, i clicked "use a device" and then Ubuntu will be in that list, click Ubuntu and it'll restart and then the grub menu will show up. I just booted into Ubuntu and updated the system by typing sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade and waited (their were a decent amount of system updates) and now when i restated it, the grub menu shows up! I don't know if updating Ubuntu had anything to do with it but at least it worked.

Christopher Champion
  • 339
  • 2
  • 5
  • 11
  • You used the UEFI menu, just like oldfred said... It is considered impolite on this site if you answer your own question without allowing the person who set you on the right path the chance of allowing an answer first... – Fabby Apr 12 '15 at 12:58
  • I think all th eToshiba's we have seen have needed bootx64.efi rename fix, only a one time reboot key works or manually going into UEFI everything otherwise works. If I accumulated fixes here for all brands, most by others in various forums. http://askubuntu.com/questions/486752/dual-boot-win-8-ubuntu-loads-only-win/486789#486789 – oldfred Apr 12 '15 at 15:11
  • sorry, i didnt mean to be impolite, i just figured that if i answered my own question, somebody else who is having the same problem can get help from it. i want to thank you all for the quick replys.. i'm just getting used to this uefi system and how it works – Christopher Champion Apr 13 '15 at 18:56