Trying to make my new Acer Aspire laptop dual boot with windows 8.1.

[Qqmike]

Some manuals are better than others. Since I built my PC, I know the motherboard and can use its manual, which is pretty good. The retail machines may be tweaked, though, and the raw motherboard manual may not be all you need. I would at least try to find the Acer Aspire Manual for the specific machine you have. There may be a tip-trick or two mentioned, maybe under an Advanced section.

http://us.acer.com/ac/en/US/content/drivers

[Qqmike]

... continuing ... just a thought ... does Acer Aspire require you to set up a "BIOS" password before it reveals to you the more advanced UEFI firmware settings?

... some Acers can access UEFI firmware through the tile menu in Windows 8 ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfRlH4C4IaA

[Qqmike]

Like these two links, the first with Rod Smith answering Answer #1, the second also looks interesting.

Turning off Fast Startup in Windows seems important. And turning off Secure Boot might be an issue. There are some details to look at here:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/61688...-secure-boot-a

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...9#post12800489

[Qqmike]

What brand laptop are the people using that have been successful in installing Kubuntu with Windows 8.1 pre-installed?

I don't know. I'll bet people have used any and all of them, within reason -- the major brands. Acer should be OK, I would think. Some of this has to do with trying to dual boot Windows vs no Windows, but that should be possible.

Try to be sure you have checked all the detailed points listed in the posts above, though.

You could also google on Acer, Acer dual boot with Windows, Acer UEFI?, etc.

I have ASUS; I know someone else with ASUS -- no problems at all. ASUS does a good job with UEFI. UEFI is still so new that any maker might have some issues, though some buggyness.

Try to be sure you've covered all the points about. Surely, Acer must provide some UEFI ("BIOS") setup menus where its EFI boot manager displays its boot menu for you to choose from -- It is "supposed" to, I think!

When you install Kubuntu, it install GRUB to the ESP under /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu, and it usually makes itself #1 in the BootOrder. Why is that not happening here? And so on. Very anomalous, imo.

We'll think on this. I'm sure others have read this--I know they have--but nothing is popping up yet. But do be sure you have exhausted the above tips. Frustrating, I know. This could be some little obscure, esoteric setting in the Acer UEFI setup menu somewhere that is stalling this. Who knows.

[geezer]

Okay - I figured I had nothing to loose and I could boot Boot-Repair again if it did screw the boot.

I erased the MBR on laptop hdd. Booted live DVD into Kubuntu and issued:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=446 count=1

and rebooted - made no difference whatsoever. So I guess that answers the question that I am definitely booting UEFI, but what it takes to influence that Windows Boot Manager, I still have no idea.

What brand laptop are the people using that have been successful in installing Kubuntu with Windows 8.1 pre-installed?

I'm thinking that instead of wasting anymore time on this Acer computer, I'll take it back and look at another one. Asus? Toshiba? Lenovo?

I decided on the Acer since it seemed to give me the most bang for the buck, but now I'm not so sure.

[Qqmike]

And another thing some people resort to when they can't get their PC to see their boot loader:
You can set a default bootloader for your PC, at
-- Default bootloader is /EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi, mounted as: /boot/efi/EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi
So your UEFI firmware looks there and will boot whatever is there. Sometimes Windows has been placed there. You could put your GRUB there, renaming the main GRUB executable as bootx64.efi ... BUT, I've not done this, and with things so unclear here as to what's going on, I am VERY hesitant to try to do anything sexy like that, don't you agree? It should not be necessary!

Does Acer have any documentation on the in's-and-out's of its UEFI-"BIOS" firmware setup and menus? I'll bet it does/should, somewhere. ASUS does a nice job of that.

Future, general reference:
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...l=1#post346604
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...l=1#post373198
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...l=1#post372221

[Qqmike]

I'll also drop this for your consideration. When I build my PC recently,
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...l=1#post368216
this is what I did to configure the UEFI settings to get started (brand new machine, nothing on it):

Configure UEFI (BIOS)

Turn on the PC, at the POST press the key (F2) to enter UEFI(-BIOS).
CSM (compatibility support module): set to Auto (default).
Disable Secure Boot: Change to “Other O/S”, which disables Secure Boot for the ASUS UEFI.
Disable Fast Boot.

[Qqmike]

http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/getting.html

• A USB flash drive image file—Although you can create your own rEFInd USB flash drive, you may find it easier to download this version and copy it to your USB drive with dd or some other low-level disk copying utility.

and the Tip on the right:

Tip: If you want to make your own bootable USB flash drive, download the binary zip file or CD-R image file, prepare a USB flash drive with a FAT32 partition, and then use the install.sh program's --usedefault option, and perhaps the --alldrivers option, as in bash install.sh --usedefault /dev/sdd1 --alldrivers to install to the first partition on /dev/sdd. This procedure should work even on a BIOS-booted computer.

which, I admit, is not immediately clear, but would probably unfold naturally as you start into doing this ... Another member here is using this to boot into his 15.10 as his booting got broken on a recent update. Or, just try using dd to copy it to a flash drive, see if that works, like we do here for a Kubuntu bootable flash drive:
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...aller-using-dd

[Qqmike]

Btw, your Protective MBR is there (in your GPT) in case you did want to boot your PC in the older legacy-BIOS-MBR mode. But to do so, you'd have turn that option on in your PC's UEFI setup menus, and usually, you also need a 1 MB bios-boot partition set up to hold Stage 2 of GRUB Legacy. But, again, since you are using UEFI mode, none of this applies.

[Qqmike]

My Protective MBR looks like this, as you can see, it is not empty, it has one "row" with something in it, as I've noticed it usually does (and the 55 aa at the end, as you probably know, is normal, it is just something like an EOF = end of file marker for the MBR):

00000000  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
*
000001[B]c0  01 00 ee fe ff ff 01 00  00 00 2f 60 38 3a 00 00[/B]  |........../`8:..|
000001d0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
*
000001f0  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 55 aa  |..............U.|
00000200

In your UEFI firmware setup, you are certain that you are NOT booting in CSM mode? or in Legacy mode? (if it has that as an option). It's OK to have a Protective MBR, and something may be in it, as long as your UEFI firmware setup (in "BIOS") is NOT set to boot in any Legacy or CSM mode.

You have rEFInd installed in Windows? But when you re-boot, you do not see any option to select rEFInd?

Can you look inside your ubuntu? (But I'll bet it is OK, I'll bet it has the right files in it).

Can you run again sudo efibootmgr and see if rEFInd is listed?
If it is listed, you could use erfibootmgr to change to boot order so rEFInd is listed first.
See man efibootmgr, at the end, see Example 3:

3.

Changing the Boot Order

Assuming the configuration in Example #1, efibootmgr -o 3,4 could be called to specify PXE boot first, then Linux boot.

Can you play the the above tips? --> try to find a way to boot rEFInd; use efibootmgr again to find the BootOrder, see what's listed; using efibootmgr to re-order the BootOrder.

I am almost suspicious of your UEFI firmware! Why is it not picking up everything? why can't you find a boot menu in the UEFI firmware menus that shows everything--Windows, ubuntu, refind, etc.?

The other thing, recall, is that rodsmithbooks somewhere shows how to put rEFInd on a bootable flash drive, and you can boot your PC with it, and then it should show ALL you boot options, we would hope.

[geezer]

Very strange, it seems. Maybe we need fresh eyes on this. Or extensive googling. Just one hard drive, just 2 OSs, but this isn't coming through as routine. (And I think we did agree that you are using the 64-bit (UEFI) version of Kubuntu, not the 32-bit.)

Not clear what 2001 is. And you've got a network boot facility, 2003, too!? What is that? We do see 0000 = Windows. But no ubuntu. If you boot into Windows and access the ESP (is it sda2?), and look inside it, is your Kubuntu there? It would appear as:
/EFI/ubuntu
and inside that directory would be the GRUB boot files for booting Kubuntu, something like:
grub.cfg, grubx64.efi, shimx64.efi, and MokManager.efi

Looked in the \EFI directory
Have the following directories:
Ubuntu
MicroSoft
boot
OEM
refind

The last because I installed refind under windows following the directions on that site.

The boot process is totally unchanged.

I'm beginning to think that the MBR is playing a role in this in some manner. When I ran Boot-Repair it listed the MBR as "protective" whatever the heck that means. The output is here:

http://paste.ubuntu.com/11789831

What would happen if I zero out the MBR?? Since it booting EFI the MBR should not be used and so zeroing it out should not be detrimental. But everything I have done has had zero effect on the Windows Boot Manager boot options screen. Maybe there is something in the MBR now that is doing that. I remember when I first booted the computer, There was a boot options screen that was a little fancy. The screen was blue with four or five options to boot - Windows, CD/DVD, USB, network and I think something unknown. I have not been able to get that options screen back. The "Windows Boot Manager" screen is white on black and utilitarian. Nothing fancy.

Just looked at the hex dump for the MBR from Boot-Repair. There is definitely something there now. Maybe Boot-Repair wrote something to the MBR that really causing a problem? Yeah looking at that Boot-Repair report Boot-Repair definitly overwrote the MBR with something from GRUB. Maybe that has frozen the boot into the Windows Boot Manager and I have to undo that "repair".

[Qqmike]

I wonder if your luck would change if you tried installing Kubuntu 14.04 instead of 15.04?

[Qqmike]

Very strange, it seems. Maybe we need fresh eyes on this. Or extensive googling. Just one hard drive, just 2 OSs, but this isn't coming through as routine. (And I think we did agree that you are using the 64-bit (UEFI) version of Kubuntu, not the 32-bit.)

Not clear what 2001 is. And you've got a network boot facility, 2003, too!? What is that? We do see 0000 = Windows. But no ubuntu. If you boot into Windows and access the ESP (is it sda2?), and look inside it, is your Kubuntu there? It would appear as:
/EFI/ubuntu
and inside that directory would be the GRUB boot files for booting Kubuntu, something like:
grub.cfg, grubx64.efi, shimx64.efi, and MokManager.efi

[geezer]

Here's my output of efibootmgr:

BootCurrent: 0001
Timeout: 2 seconds
BootOrder: 2001,0000,2002,2003
Boot0000* Windows Boot Manager
Boot0001* USB HDD: USB 2.0 USB Flash Drive
Boot0002* Unknown Device:
Boot0003* Unknown Device:
Boot2001* EFI USB Device
Boot2002* EFI DVD/CDROM
Boot2003* EFI Network

The only boot options I could find in the BIOS (F2) listing are for devices - no OSs.

[Qqmike]

Is it possible to install rEFInd from the LiveDVD?

What I have seen is people putting rEFInd on a live, bootable flash drive and using it from there. When you boot your PC, that rEFInd flash drive must be plugged in, though. The rodsmith website should tell how.

The output of gdisk looks normal. You have an ESP, the EFI System Partition, and partitions for Kubuntu, and it is a GPT.

When you were in the Live Kubuntu session, I forgot to have you run another very informative command, efibootmgr. You might have to install it in the live session, I'm not sure. It tells you your UEFI boot order, so you could see Windows probably being first in order. But it should also show you the Kubuntu-GRUB loader, we hope being second in order.

When you re-boot your PC, can you not interrupt the POST by pressing a key, get into your PCs UEFI ("BIOS") setup, and see the list of OSs available to boot? You should be able to do this. And from one of those boot menus, you should be able to select Kubuntu to boot (instead of letting it automatically select Windows to boot). Every PC maker sets up its UEFI firmware differently, but I would think Ace should provide this capability. Sometimes in that firmware setup, there is more than one boot menu, like a boot override menu, which you could use on THAT booting session to boot into Kubuntu. Maybe you could try that, explore those firmware menus in "BIOS" (which is actually UEFI setup now).

Here's my output from efibootmgr, run with sudo, btw:

sudo efibootmgr
[sudo] password for mike: 
BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0000,0003,0002,0009,0007,0008,0001,0004,0005
Boot0000* ubuntu
Boot0001* UEFI:CD/DVD Drive
Boot0002* grub_sda5K1504
Boot0003* rEFInd Boot Manager
Boot0004* UEFI:Removable Device
Boot0005* UEFI:Network Device
Boot0007* Hard Drive 
Boot0008* CD/DVD Drive 
Boot0009* ubuntu

The first thing in BootOrder is Boot0000 *ubuntu, which is my Kubuntu 14.04 (the asterisk * indicates that the ubuntu entry is active in the current boot order, it is included in the game).

The second thing in BootOrder is 0003 = rEFInd, and rEFInd, will boot anything on my PC! When my PC boots (it's an ASUS), I can press F2 to enter UEFI setup, I can access a boot override menu that lists all these options, and I can highlight-click an entry to boot that one time for that booting session, and it will boot.

That third thing is 0002, grub_sda5K1504: that's a name I made up for a grub that I installed as a test/experiment that would boot a Kubuntu 15.04 that I have on another partition.