Trying Again - to Dual boot Windows 8.1 and Kubuntu 13.10

[Snowhog]

hehe. Yup. You beat me to my 'edited' post with that link.

[longnosemonkey]

Snowhog, I don't have any console skills. Will installing Ubuntu server be straight forward for a noob? What do I need to know before I start?

[longnosemonkey]

Trouble is back.

I downloaded ubuntu server 13.10 amd64 and copied it into a usb drive and rebooted to install. I tried many combinations of everything, but nothing worked.

I set the boot priority to usb, but the laptop ignores it and boots Windows.

I even tried to disable Secure Boot, but something funny happened: When I rebooted, with or without the usb inserted and SecureBoot disabled, a black borderless screen would cover half of the Toshiba splash screen with this message:

error: unknown filesystem
grubrescue>

But it doesn't recognize standard comments like exit. I don't know any more console commands than that. I had to restart and disable Secureboot to make that go away.

I had restored the laptop to a fresh condition, but there are still several partitions that are unaccounted for. This laptop has a least 8 or 9 partitions in all. Several of them are recovery and system partitions of a few hundred MB each. Could the error message be some remanent from my previous attempt to install kubuntu?

[longnosemonkey]

Sorry, but does anyone know what to do next?

[longnosemonkey]

Okay, I used Linux Live USB Creator to create bootable usb of ubuntu server 13.10 server. I then installed it successfully. I know I did because the empty 20GB partition is now not visible in Windows.

But reFInd doesn't show during boot. The computer just boots Windows without giving me a choice of OS!

Disabling Secureboot gives me the same black screen problem I described in post 18, but the error is different, saying a file is missing.

What next?

[SteveRiley]

This...

I had restored the laptop to a fresh condition, but there are still several partitions that are unaccounted for. This laptop has a least 8 or 9 partitions in all. Several of them are recovery and system partitions of a few hundred MB each.

Leads me to believe that it may be time to start fresh. Do you have Windows 8/8.1 installation media? If so, I'd encourage you to back up your data, wipe your drive completely, and start from scratch.

[longnosemonkey]

Do I have to? I spent so much time, updating to Windows 8.1...

I do have a Windows 8 recovery media that I made with Windows 8 inbuilt recovery cd maker program.

Also, I expected Windows to get rid of all my partitions and restore to factory state with what I did. That's what the settings say, but it just wiped my major partitions, while leaving them all intact. SteveRiley, how will the recovery media option be different from what I just did?

[longnosemonkey]

Here's a list of partitions according to Minitool Partition Wizard. Most of the minor partitions came with the laptop.

450MB GPT Recovery Partition (System)
260MB GPT EFI System Partition
128MB GPT Reserved Partition
150GB GPT Data Partition (Windows)
350MB GPT Recovery Partition
400GB GPT Data Partition (Data)
20GB GPT Data Partition (Linux)
16GB GPT EFI System Partition (Linux Swap)
9GB GPT Recovery Partition (Recovery)

I made only the Windows, Data and Linux partitions. All the other partitions came with the harddrive. Should I still use recovery media to restore?

[longnosemonkey]

Okay, I've restored it to factory condition. There is one large partition now and possibly multiple smaller partitions. Before I update and try again, I have to make all the partitions again.

Can someone give me a good tool to do partitions? I think I used an old CD version of GRUB and that may have caused some of these problems.

[longnosemonkey]

These are the partitions I currently have installed according to Minitool Partition Wizard:

450MB GPT Recovery Partition (System)
260MB GPT EFI System Partition (Active & Boot)
128MB GPT Reserved Partition

586GB GPT Data Partition (System)
9GB GPT Recovery Partition

Should I use Minitool to partition the drive into Windows, Data, Linux and Linux Swap partitions? Is it a good tool?

I've forgotten what I knew about logical and extended partitions and all that. Can someone tell me how to break it down to get these four partitions?