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I have a NON-UEFI laptop. However UBUNTU keeps detecting and wanting to install UEFI. Obviously the system never boots if I allow it to install in UEFI mode. Once a UEFI partition and installation has been created I can only boot from AMD64+MAC images, as standard images give me and "error file '/boot/' not found" and grub2 freezes and hangs up the machine. I can only reboot after that. I can however wipe the partition table and the LIVE USB installer will boot up just fine. What command line options can I give to tell it to install in BIOS BOOT mode and not UEFI?

Frank Barcenas
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  • I thought you were able to say you don't want to install with UEFI when the prompt comes up. – TheWanderer Jul 06 '16 at 19:42
  • Nope. not if UBUNTU incorrectly detects that it is a UEFI laptop. – Frank Barcenas Jul 06 '16 at 19:47
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    Are you sure you don't have UEFI? That should only happen if you boot in EFI mode. – TheWanderer Jul 06 '16 at 19:52
  • You only get a few options, Install along side your existing OS. Which in this case there is none, so It's not going to offer that, and erase everyting and install Ubuntu 16.04. If I select this option I get a warning that if I continue to install in UEFI mode that other BIOS boot mode OSs may not boot anymore, however it does not give an option to install in BIOS BOOT mode. – Frank Barcenas Jul 06 '16 at 19:54
  • That's strange. How are you booting into the USB? The BIOS boot menu? – TheWanderer Jul 06 '16 at 19:57
  • See Is there a way to force Ubuntu to install in BIOS mode? – Jonas Czech Jul 06 '16 at 19:59
  • YEah I saw it already but it does not give any procedural steps so its very confusing. Is there any thing that says 1. Boot from UBUNTU live STICK. 2. RUn this command to install grub manually. 3. COntinue with the installer and select something ELSE and select the second partition and press continue. That writeup is something confusing. – Frank Barcenas Jul 06 '16 at 20:03
  • You only get the option between UEFI and BIOS when you boot from UEFI boot menu. And you would not get UEFI unless you have an UEFI system, even if Windows is in BIOS boot mode. How you boot installer is then how it installs. Shows install with screen shots. Both BIOS purple accessibility screen & UEFI black grub menu screen https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI – oldfred Jul 06 '16 at 20:04
  • Do you have NVIDIA? – TheWanderer Jul 06 '16 at 20:09
  • No I just pressed F12 on boot and select the USB stick, there was no UEFI menu. – Frank Barcenas Jul 06 '16 at 20:20
  • I'm trying an installation right now having manually created the partitions, with only two partitions. One for / and one for swap., and see how that goes. That way there is no space for UEFI and BIOS boot should be forced right? – Frank Barcenas Jul 06 '16 at 20:23

1 Answers1

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Step 1: Run the Ubuntu Installer. Select SOMETHING ELSE at the storage configuration prompt. Creating one main primary partition mounting '/' and a secondary partition as swap about the same size as your memory. The installation will fail at the end saying that GRUB-EFI-XX could not find an EFI partition. This is fine and normal.

Step 2. Keep using the live environment you have running or boot from an Ubuntu AMD64+MAC LIVE-USB STICK. CHROOT the environment on the drive and try to install GRUB-PC. You will get an error that GRUB-EFI was not able to install and therefore it will resist the GRUB-PC installation. You will have to do a 'dpkg -r grub-efi-xxx' before it will allow you to install GRUB-PC.

Step 3. Install GRUB-PC, select the drive (/dev/SDA). Reboot and whalla. Instant fix. Now you can install modern debian based distros into a NON-UEFI laptop.

Step 4. You may have to do some manual cleanup since the installation script did not finish running. You may have to manually remove the installer and any other stuff that may have been included in the LIVE USB.

Frank Barcenas
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