dual boot, grub, and the likes...

l2k

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hi all.

i recently passed to the linux world. i got myself an ubuntu, and i loaded the cinamon UI. so far so good.
but, i still need some windows7 os anyway. some of my softwares are not ported on linux. ok. i'll just dual boot it.

so, i bought a brand new blank ssd, i sticked my W7 flashdrive installation, made a partition for it in ntfs, and installed it.
so far so good.
so i sticked my ubuntu flashdrive, and installed it on the other partition. in ext4.
works. fantastik.

now, when i power on the computer, grub asked me if i wanted to go ubuntu, ubuntu advanced recovery and such. but no windows.

i found a way to enter windows pressing f11 when rebooting and forcing the system to boot on the win partition.

futher research led me to think it was a mbr/uefi missmatch problem. and grub cant see or access legacy mbr.

so, i did what came to mind. i tried to convert the first partition to efi. i found a command line to do that.

and there is when the real problems came.

now no matter what i do, i can only access a grub comand line if i want to boot from the hard drive.

i reinstalled and w7 and ubuntu, reformated everything, cant do anything.
when installed, it boots only once into the system, then after the restart, i only get a grub command line. (and i don undestand anything to the grub command line)


any guru here to point me what i did wrong or what to do to fix this ?
 


Ubuntu is no longer what it used to be and it seems you screwed it further. Better download and install Anarchy Linux - basically it's Arch Linux with GUI installer. Surely the installer doesn't look like much but everything in Arch is a lot easier than Ubuntu. Once the system starts, download grub-customizer and manually add Windows entry. The program is pretty simple, so you should be able to do it easily. Just remember when you're done to press "Save" and then reboot in order to see the result.

At the moment Anarchy's website is down for unknown reason and there's no telling when it will be up. So, if at the time of reading this post the website www.anarchylinux.org is still down, you can download it from mediafire where I uploaded the image: https://www.mediafire.com/file/gng6kmeat2uh23m/ANARCHYV104.iso

And you don't need to dual boot for everything. 90% of the games and programs run in Linux with Wine and SteamPlay. Here's a video playing a windows game on linux - I didn't make the video, someone else did.

 
Boot into Ubuntu and run this command.

sudo update-grub

Than reboot.
After running that command you should be able to use the arrow keys to boot into either Ubuntu or Windows.

If you can't boot into either os it's because you didn't install Ubuntu to the MBR of the drive.
 
G'day @l2k and welcome to linux.org :)

If you really want the Windows 7 back, I would be inclined to get in touch with www.sevenforums.com and explain your situation, they used to be pretty helpful. Once you get that back up and running, you could come back to us, and we can give you a blow by blow on how to dualboot with the Ubuntu.

Questions I would ask (and they may have some of the same)

1. In your BIOS setup, do you have a switch to change between MBR/Legacy/CSM and UEFI? It may be included with Boot Sequence/Order or elsewhere.

2. What is the brand name and model number for your computer, and year of manufacture? You may find the details in your BIOS.

3. Is the new SSD the only drive on the computer, or os there also eg a SATA HDD?

4. What is the capacity of each, if applicable?

5. Do you know if the Windows 7 was 32-bit or 64-bit?

Cheers

Chris Turner
wizardfromoz
 
hi.
thanks for the replies.
i'll check out sevenforum in a bit

so in my bios, its set up to be both legacy and uefi. the other choise is only uefi.

its an msi b85 gaming motherboard with an i7 4790k from 4years ago (wasnt top of the line when i bought it) 32ram, gtx 970

there were other hdd, but to reduce the risk of something bad happening, i unpluged them. there is data i cant live without on them.
the ssd is a kingston 512gb, split in 2 similar parts.
the other hdd are 2tb and 1tb, and another ssd 120gb i use for swap and cache (3d artist here)

win7 is 64bit, tweaked by not microsoft, but thats not why its not booting


i booted from the ubuntu flashdrive, and did the grub update, no sucess
 
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Ubuntu would have to be installed in order for sudo grub-update to work.
 
ok.
win7 is installed in efi.
i think i'll never really know what the problem was. each time i had some error, i just kept dlding another iso and try with that one. and one did work. (at least for now)

so then i booted under ubuntu flashdrive, and proceeded to install. i made a partition for the /, a swap, and a /home.

then installed it.

but, there is no grub now when i power on my machine. it goes straight to win. i can force it into ubuntu by F11 boot order.

any idea why ?
 
You should leave whatever settings were set in the BIOS/UEFI as their defaults and only change the Secure Boot option to no. This won't break Windows and allows all distros of Linux (except in rare cases) to install without issues. Don't disconnect any drives when installing Linux or Linux won't be able to see any other drives during install. Instead, run 'sudo fdisk -l" to get an inventory of storage devices before installing so that you install to the correct drive/partition. But since you did unplug during install, you can most likely resolve the issues by going pressing F11 and telling the computer to boot to the Flash drive. So right now it's pointing to your Windows drive and during boot it looks at the MBR of your Windows hard drive which only knows about WIndows. Since you unplugged it during boot, changing it to the Linux drive will have the exact oposite affect. The Linux MBR only knows about Linux and will go to Grub, which also only knows about Linux. But don't dispair. Unlike Windows, Linux plays nice with the other OS. Once you get Linux booted up, run the command 'sudo update-grub' in terminal and Linux will scan all storage devices for OSes and update Grub accordingly. Let us know how it goes.
 
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And slow down. Stop making changes and reinstalling. Let us help you figure out why you're having the issues before going and doing things. WHen you get to the point where you feel like you KNOW what is what you can go and do those things. If you had waited to hear what we had to say, you may not have lost all your Windows data.
 
-::::::- Before you do anything else do a back-up of all of your files.-::::::-

The reason your machine is going straight to Windows is most likely because of the Windows Boot Manager being in control. This also happens when one forgets to install Grub to the MBR.

Boot into Ubuntu and run sudo update-grub and than reboot.
Upon rebooting you should have the choice to boot into whatever os you want.
 
none of my other hdd are connected, so i didnt loose anything but time.

i'll do a sudo update grub tonight and let you know how it went.



i found it strange that it went straight to win, because, saturday, i installed a tampered iso of win7 (awfully redesigned with screenshots of games and explosions in the file explorer and a lot of bad taste bling bling, but hey, it worked) and then, my ubuntu.
in taht instance, it worked all fine, with the grub taking the priority and leting me choose what system i want.
but couldnt live with that version so much tampered, so i looked for another one. i had a lot of trouble finding a win that installed into efi mode.
 
Don't forget the hyphen after the work update.

It's sudo update-grub.

Sorry mate I haven't ran Windows in about 8 years.
Maybe look in a Windows 7 Forum.
https://www.sevenforums.com/
 
im up and running under both systems now.

the windows bit as quite a pain.

so for a while, i could only boot into win, unless i pressed F11 at reboot and choose ubuntu.

i managed to find that inside the bios boot order, i could change not only the physical drive but also the logical partition.
then i said bios to go to grub directly

and its fine now.
 

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