1

I'm new to Linux and I have only used Windows so far (Currently: windows 8). But for a Bachelor Project at my university, I was advised to use Linux in combination with computations in statistical physics. I want to have a dual-boot Windows 8 and Linux.

Before installing, I read a lot of warnings and tips. I followed them (disabling Secure Boot in Windows 8, disabling Fast Boot). Then I made a partition to use for Linux Mint 17.2 Mate, and a swap partition. I installed it, and everything worked fine. But when turning on my computer, the grub screen didn't appear. After a day's work, I had installed Xubuntu instead of Mint and did a few Boot Repairs, and disabled the 'Secure boot' option in the Boot Repair Advanced options. After that, I could use Xubuntu without problems, also after rebooting. But I liked Mint better, so yesterday I tried to install Mint the same way as I did Xubuntu. But at the 'installing the grub2 package', the installation aborted with the error:

the grub-efi-amd64-signed package failed to install into /target/.

My guess is that I have made a mistake in the location of the bootloader, before the installation process. I installed (and later removed) Xubuntu, and with Xubuntu I installed the bootloader in /dev/sda2, where also the Windows boot manager is located. Before that, when installing Xubuntu another time, I installed the bootloader in a separate /boot partition /dev/sda8. Finally, another time I also installed the bootloader in /dev/sda. It was really a trial-and-error fixing the problem that no grub screen appeared at the beginning.

My guess is that now, those bootloaders that I've installed with Xubuntu on sda, sda2 and sda8 cause problems for the grub2 package with Mint to install.

I've already looked at many pages about the same issue, but none worked. I have a Internet connection and the 'extra 64' is present (see Ubuntu 12.04 --- grub-efi-amd64-signed failed to install into /target/).

What can I do? Any tips from experienced users? Or should I try another distro? Thanks in advance! Greetings from Holland.

Community
  • 1
H. Jongbloed
  • 11
  • 1
    how many bootloader do you have currently?? – Aizuddin Zali Oct 11 '15 at 12:25
  • It says that Windows Boot Manager is installed on /dev/sda2, and when turning on the computer without the live usb plugged in, I get a Grub screen where I can choose between Windows and Mint. However, when I click on Mint, the system fails and the screen goes black. I think this is because it is installed half: the installation stopped at the given error. So, I only can reach mint with my live usb plugged in the computer. – H. Jongbloed Oct 11 '15 at 15:27
  • By the way, my most recent Boot Repair has yielded the following URL: http://paste2.org/9xXNKpw0 – H. Jongbloed Oct 11 '15 at 16:11

1 Answers1

1

HPs are notorious for forgetting their boot loader information, and there's even evidence supporting this hypothesis in your Boot Repair output; for instance:

chroot /mnt/boot-sav/sda5 efibootmgr -v
BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 0 seconds
No BootOrder is set; firmware will attempt recovery

Note that last line, which means that the computer will try to boot the fallback boot loader -- EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi. (Some EFIs will actually fall back to the Windows boot loader in this situation -- EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi.)

This is defective firmware. You might be able to get a fix from HP, but that's unlikely. If the computer is new enough, I'd return it to the store for a refund; but your mention of Windows 8 makes me think you're past that point.

This leaves you with two options, assuming you really need a dual boot:

  • Rename the fallback boot loaders (both the ones I mentioned earlier) and put copies of GRUB (or some other boot loader or boot manager) in their place. This is a flaky and ugly hack of a workaround, not a fix; but it's the easiest way to get results. Boot Repair has an option to do this automatically. It's called something like "back up and replace boot loaders" (I don't recall the exact phrasing) on its Advanced menu.
  • Wipe the disk clean and do a fresh install of both Windows and Ubuntu, but do so in BIOS/CSM/legacy mode rather than in EFI/UEFI mode. Forcing the boot mode may be a bit tricky, though; you'll need to figure out how to do it with your specific firmware implementation, since there's no standardization of how to do this. A variant of this approach is to convert both your OSes to boot in BIOS mode, but that's likely to be more tedious than re-installing. You'd probably want do this only if you've spent a lot of time customizing your installation and have lots of data files -- but an in-place conversion risks data loss, so you'd need to back up for safety anyhow, and at that point a re-installation starts to look pretty reasonable.
Rod Smith
  • 44,284
  • 7
  • 63
  • 105