Troubles for Installing ubuntu in HP1000 with Windows to go

Question

I found this question which was duplicated here that is related with the same model I have. But in my case I don't pretend to install gnu/linux alongside with win 8. In fact Windows 8 was banished from the hard drive a couple of weeks ago.

But I have yet two problems that still remains:

The first is a thing called Windows to go that is installed and prevented me from booting from any other media and there was no way or option in the BIOS to disable it.

The second one is a warning that appear each time I try to install linux and it's related with EFI, the warning says:

Go back to the menu and correct this problem? (as superuser)

The partition table format in use on your disks normally requires you to create a separate partition for boot loader code. This partition should be marked for use as “EFI boot partition” and should be at least 35 MB in size. Note that this is not the same as a partition mounted on /boot.

If you do not go back to the partitioning menu and correct this error, boot loader installation may fail later, although it may still be possible to install the boot loader to a partition.

Disclaimer

I use to install creating manually the partitions within the advanced options menu. I worked doing dual installations since 2008, including some cases with Windows 8 without much problem.

Therefore I created a new partition with 104 MB formatted in FAT32 for that EFI partition needed besides the common partitions I use to create: /, /home and swap. But the problem remains.

I can install normally in any case (I tried with Linux Mint 17, 17.2, debian 8 and Ubuntu Studio 14.04 twice). But in the end, when I reboot, always appears this message:

No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key

I don't know what's wrong. I set up the BIOS for make able the legacy mode and avoid the secure boot from UEFI.

Should I install automatically instead of create manually the partitions?

Answer 1

The partition table format in use on your disks normally requires you to create a separate partition for boot loader code. This partition should be marked for use as “EFI boot partition” and should be at least 35 MB in size. Note that this is not the same as a partition mounted on /boot.

This is a reference to an EFI System Partition (ESP). As described on the Wikipedia page to which I've linked, this is a FAT partition that has an EFI type code of C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B. Because EFI type codes are so long and ugly, they're normally referred to in other ways in software. GParted and parted both identify them with a "boot flag" (which is unrelated to a "boot flag" under MBR), and gdisk and its relatives identify them as having a type of EF00. The lack of a type code is probably what's causing your problems.

Note also that 104MB is rather small for an ESP. I know the text you quoted specifies 35MB as the minimum size, but that's downright tiny. The problem is that some EFIs have bugs that cause such small ESPs to exhibit strange behaviors like files becoming inaccessible. I recommend making your ESP 550MiB in size. This is huge compared to the probable storage needs of the partition, so there's no need to go bigger than this; but it's big enough to avoid EFI bugs, which is the main point of it.

I don't know what's wrong. I set up the BIOS for make able the legacy mode and avoid the secure boot from UEFI.

The error message you're seeing indicates you're booting in EFI mode, not in BIOS mode. This isn't really surprising; the boot-mode options in most EFIs are vague, and they often function more as suggestions than as commands. That is, enabling the BIOS/CSM/legacy support merely makes it possible for the computer to boot in that mode. Whether it will actually boot in BIOS mode or in EFI mode depends on quite a few factors that you probably don't even know -- things like algorithms in the firmware and details of how your boot medium is laid out. In other words, it's effectively random. It is possible to force a BIOS-mode boot (assuming the computer supports it), but doing this requires a fair amount of expertise. One way is to carefully select the boot option in the computer's built-in boot manager: Pick the option for your installation medium that lacks the string "UEFI". This approach doesn't work on all computers, though. Another way is to create a boot medium that lacks the EFI boot loaders (stored in the EFI/BOOT directory on a FAT partition on a USB drive, for instance).

Forcing an EFI-mode boot is usually easier: Disabling the BIOS/CSM/legacy support in the firmware normally does the job. Sometimes it's necessary to create a boot medium without a BIOS boot loader, or tweak the format of the boot medium to satisfy the peculiarities of your EFI.

Incidentally, Secure Boot is just one optional feature of UEFI. Any x86/x86-64 computer that ships with Windows 8.x is required, by contract with Microsoft, to enable you to disable Secure Boot. It's usually possible to disable Secure Boot and still boot in EFI mode. That's not to say that you should do this, though; Ubuntu works well with Secure Boot on most computers, and the feature can (at least theoretically) improve system security. IMHO, it's worth at least trying to boot with it active.