Windows 8 inaccessible after installing Kubuntu 12.10

[Frank616]

What the heck! What happened to my Windows partition? I can see it in Dolphin but GRUB doesn't give me the option to boot from it. Did I overwrite the Windows MBR or something? What do I do now?

I just finished putting 12.10 on an Asus X202E Win8 netbook. I couldn't get Windows 8 and Linux to co-exist on the same drive.

Steve is probably the expert here on UEFI, but I have a guess. And believe me, it is only a guess.

Try enabling secure boot again in the UEFI setup utility, then try booting again. I'm thinking that Windows will probably show, and Kubuntu won't.

IIUC, Win8 uses a whole different partitioning scheme, and I am guessing that GRUB is not up to speed on that yet. I am also guessing that MBR as such does not exist in UEFI, which I suspect is why my machine would not see Kubuntu.

I got around this by removing the Win8 drive, and installing a 245 GB SSD. Makes the machine REALLY nice to use. Boots to the password prompt in just over 10 seconds, and to a full Kubuntu desktop in just over 30 seconds, complete with the opening Kubuntu sound.

As I say, all of this is pure guesswork on my part, and I am NOT any sort of computer guru. But, it will give you something to try.

Frank.

[longnosemonkey]

Okay, I'm trying this now.

[sealbhach]

Yes, you can try this in the meantime, just mount /dev/sda7 which is your Linux root partition. The instructions are independent of the desktop so they will work in either Ubuntu or Kubuntu. Note that after this you may just end up back at square one and you will have to edit /etc/default/grub to get the menu to show again, like you did here. It's worth a try though, sometimes grub doesn't install properly during a full installation and reinstalling grub sometimes fixes problems for people.

.

[longnosemonkey]

Snowhog asked me to wait for SteveRiley's expert opinion.

Is this something I can attempt in the meanwhile?

And will the Ubuntu instructions work on Kubuntu 12.10?

[sealbhach]

So where are we with this? We think the "secure boot" is messing up grub? Did you try to reinstall Grub from a LiveCD as per instructions here ?

.

[longnosemonkey]

The important point is that this is a brand new laptop, and I've made System Restore CDs. If the Windows partition is non-recoverable or if the recovery process takes too much effort, I could always restore the laptop to factory condition. I would lose no data, because I haven't yet moved any of my data onto it. I wanted to make certain that I could create all the partitions and dual-boot before I started using it daily.

[pauly]

The good news is you still have a working windows partition. It's just your current windows bootloader is not working. Stay patient, this issue is solvable. Wait for Steve. He is experienced with this. It will get solved. Microsoft has made dual booting more difficult with uefi so its relatively new to a lot of us.

[longnosemonkey]

I know that all the people who helped me are unpaid volunteers working a thankless job (on Christmas Day!) so I'm definitely very grateful to all of you. Please don't think my frustration extends to you.

I've been working late into the night on this laptop and spent the last 7-10 days groggy at work. I'm running out of time before the return period expires. I want to make sure that everything is fully functional or I'll have to give it back.

I'm just frustrated because this should be straightforward but its just been a nightmare. But I'll just wait for SteveRiley.


Once more, thanks to all of you.

[Snowhog]

I sent him an email with this threads URL. He, like all the Administrators here, are 'non-paid' volunteers. We do this out of our love of Linux/Kubuntu. Not sure when he will get to see this thread, but he was on KFN as recently as this morning. He is a 'regular' here, so I don't think that it would be very long. You've waited this long, so wait just a bit more. His experience with UEFI and Secure Boot is 'impressive'.

[longnosemonkey]

I'd like to thank all the people who posted here so far and helped me with this issue. Merry Christmas and God Bless.

One thing about my laptop's UEFI/BIOS - I thought that all new computers ran the sharp new interface of UEFI. The UEFIs I've seen are all this new interface, but my laptop still runs the old 80s GUI of BIOS so I'm not sure if I have BIOS or UEFI. The model is Toshiba Satellite L840D-00C.

But I did disable Secureboot and tried to boot a GParted Live CD but Toshiba techs told me that Toshiba doesn't support booting GParted. The tech advised me to get a Linux LiveCD that worked with Win8 and SecureBoot and run GParted from in there which is what I did before installing Kubuntu.

When I ran GParted from the Ubuntu Live USB before installing Kubuntu, it told me that sda2 was the boot partition. Having heard that this was where I was to point the Kubuntu bootloader, I did so. I installed Kubuntu in sda7 and made sda8 the swap partition. I don't know if that helps, but that's what I did.


When can I expect SteveRiley? I've been fighting with this laptop for more than a week and I'm sick of it. If this doesn't work out, I'll need to give back this laptop because it's not worth all this trouble.

[Snowhog]

I'm not familiar with the workings of UEFI / Secure Boot and Windows 8, but SteveRiley, one of our Administrators, is. That said, the report shows that there is no boot loader in the MBR of /dev/sda. Grub is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdb.

Not a desired answer, but I'd suggest that you wait until SteveRiley comes on and takes a look at this thread. I'm sure that he will have some helpful advise, if not an actual solution.

[longnosemonkey]

I was caught in dependency hell for a little while, but I finally got most of them installed and then gawk.

Here is the new results file. RESULTS1.txt

And I don't know what to tell you snowhog. I disabled SecureBoot in BIOS and tried to boot up GParted from DVD and USB, with no success. The only DVD is managed to boot from was the System Restore CD. I think other people are having this issue with Toshiba hardware.

[vinnywright]

I think you need to find the function keys to access the uefi firmware setup and boot order sequence .........you should be able to boot windows still by telling the uefi to boot the /efi/Boot/bootx64.efi in /sda2 ,,,,,,,I think ,,,,I have no UEFI equipment to try on

VINNY

[Snowhog]

"Toshiba tells me that they don't support the option of a disabled Secure Boot."

But Secure Boot 'has' to be an option that the user can elect to enable/disable. That was a requirement of UEFI. Your BIOS settings should have this, and it is very likely that is enabled by default.

[longnosemonkey]

Hi pauly, I tried to disable Secure boot in BIOS but Toshiba tells me that they don't support the option of a disabled Secure Boot. And when I tried the ethernet thing, a connection appeared, but I couldn't load anything in Rekonq or access the repository.

I'm trying it vinny's way now.