Problem after UEFI dual boot installation

Question

I tried installing Ubuntu 16.04 LTS alongside the Windows 8.1 of my Vaio SVE15128CXS laptop. It is the first time I am trying to do this with an UEFI computer system, I read carefully the instructions to do it but I did not find Fastboot or quickboot in my UEFI system. Ubuntu is installed normally but my computer does not boot on Grub, I have to put in my usb key then boot into ubuntu, to restart my pc on ubuntu whenever i want to boot on Ubuntu, otherwise it directly boots on Windows. I tried to fix the problem with Boot-repair, but it did not work. And know I am asking you for help.

Please help me fix my problem ASAP, and thank you in advance.

Harpartap Singh

Fastboot is in WIndows settings not UEFI setting. I think you installed grub to the USB key instead of the EFI partition on the HDD, though windows is sometimes a pain abut letting other systems boot. When you boot ubuntu use gparted to verify which partitions are mounted. — ravery, Sep 14 '17 at 00:18
May be best to see details, you can run from your Ubuntu live installer or any working install, use ppa version not older Boot-Repair ISO: Post the link to the Create BootInfo summary report. Is part of Boot-Repair: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Info and: https://sourceforge.net/p/boot-repair/home/Home/ If it does not auto copy to paste bin site, manually copy the report and post that link. May be this, but do not overwrite the Windows .efi boot file: http://askubuntu.com/questions/150174/sony-vaio-with-insyde-h2o-efi-bios-will-not-boot-into-grub-efi — oldfred, Sep 14 '17 at 03:37
@ravery: I think you mixed up QuickBoot and Quick StartUp, I have disabled Quick StartUp in Windows configuration. But QuickBoot has to be disabled in UEFI Bios firmware, where I can not find it. Finally, I can not find Intel SRT as it is said on this guide link. — Harpartap S C, Sep 15 '17 at 01:46
Have you run the Boot-Repair fix in advanced options of "Use the standard efi file" as that copies shimx64.efi to bootx64.efi to be a hard drive boot entry. But your UEFI is not even showing the Microsoft entry. See efibootmgr -v section of report. Workarounds for Sony, HP & others: http://askubuntu.com/questions/486752/dual-boot-win-8-ubuntu-loads-only-win/486789#486789 Do not recommend replacing /EFI/Microsoft/boot/bootmgfw.efi with grub or shim as Windows updates will overwrite that work around. this also is an alternative: http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/index.html — oldfred, Sep 15 '17 at 03:43

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 15 '17 at 13:48

Your Boot Info output shows a very short list of bootable OSes, which includes neither Windows nor Ubuntu entries, both of which would normally be present on an installation like yours:

=================== efibootmgr -v
BootCurrent: 0001
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 2001
Boot0001* EFI USB Device (VerbatimSTORE N GO)   PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x1d,0x0)/USB(0,0)/USB(0,0)/HD(1,GPT,78ec17c7-5927-434e-ba32-4e26d84539ca,0x800,0x3bafdf)RC
Boot2001* EFI USB Device RC

Chances are it's booting to Windows only because the computer is treating the Windows boot loader as a fallback boot loader in a way that does not show up in the efibootmgr output.

Judging by dates of reviews of your model I found online, your computer seems to date from 2012, when many manufacturers shipped badly broken EFIs that had problems like this. The best solution, really, is to ditch the broken computer entirely; however, that's wasteful and may not be economically possible for you. Thus, you may need to look into a workaround, several of which are covered in my answer to this question:

efibootmanager -o changes are lost on reboot

I did notice that Sony's site includes a firmware ("BIOS") update from November of 2016, so I'd start by applying that and then trying Boot Repair again. In my experience, manufacturers seldom fix these truly egregious boot problems, but a firmware update four years after the product's release is also pretty extraordinary, so maybe Sony's actually done something about this problem.

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 15 '17 at 23:32

my problem has been solved. As the Boot-info report suggested to do this:

=================== Suggested repair

The default repair of the Boot-Repair utility would reinstall the grub-efi-amd64-signed of sda8, using the following options: sda3/boot/efi, Additional repair would be performed: unhide-bootmenu-10s fix-windows-boot use-standard-efi-file restore-efi-backups

=================== Final advice in case of suggested repair

If your computer reboots directly into Windows, try to change the boot order in your BIOS. If your BIOS does not allow to change the boot order, change the default boot entry of the Windows bootloader. For example you can boot into Windows, then type the following command in an admin command prompt: bcdedit /set {bootmgr} path \EFI...\grub*.efi

So I did enter this line in command prompt on windows and problem was solved, my computer now starts on grub.

Thank you very much everyone for helping me solve the problem.

Problem after UEFI dual boot installation

2 Answers2