How to dual boot ubuntu and windows 8?

[s_nvyas]

This is first laptop with secured boot bios which I cannot disable also not use ubuntu inside windows. Now I am facing the problem windows cannot boot also selectio os not display. While ubuntu is working.

[s_nvyas]

Quick Reply is excepted.

[penguintutor]

This sounds like the same problem I am having.

I have installed ubuntu as dual boot with Windows 8.

The HP laptop always boots into Windows. I can select Ubuntu by pressing F9, but that is not an option in the BIOS boot setup so cannot be selected for default boot.

It is also possible to completely remove Windows 8 and it boots into Linux, but with Windows 8 installed dual boot it always boots Windows unless F9 is pressed.

I have tried changing the UEFI boot order using efibootmgr but it appears to be ignored and then set back to Windows as the default.

I have searched for others with similar problems and it seams this is a "Feature" of HP that does not allow you to select an alternate OS in the BIOS or through the UEFI boot manager.

[fritzmark]

I think we have to found a way to disable this surely extremly cool featurebug by ourself. Since we get no real answer here.

[Beojan]

HP's UEFI implementation is broken, and ignores the UEFI boot order you set (for bootloaders on the hard drive) in favour of booting /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi (the Win8 bootloader).

I worked around this by copying /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi to /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw-2.efi, then copying /EFI/debian/grubx64.efi to /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi, and modifying the windows boot entry in grub2 setup to boot /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw-2.efi (I believe this is similar to what Ubuntu's boot-repair does).

If you do this, keep a live CD or USB handy in case it fails to work.

[fritzmark]

Hmm I will try this! Sounds good. Since HP is not able to make an firmwareupdate as it seems this is my last hope. So i don"t need to fear a defect F9 key anymore.

One thing I know. This was the last stuff I bought from HP!

[clairejay]

Please I'd love to know how to install and boot two operating systems on my HP PAVILION SLEEKBOOK 14. The second os being the ubuntu 13.04.
Thanks.

[Beojan]

1) It's best to start before you have any data or programs installed in windows, so if you do, back them up and do a factory restore (WHICH WILL DELETE ALL DATA ON THE LAPTOP)
2) Is your device running Windows 8 or a previous version?

[kbecker]

I want to support this post of "never buying HP again". My daughter, who is doing biology/CS research in college, was given a grant that was going to be used to support a newer computer for both research and her everyday life and note taking in college. As it happens, her computationally intensive programming happens to be in Linux, and her current Toshiba laptop had did not have the current, better generation of Intel processors to support that effort. The Toshiba had been rigged to dual boot into Windows or Lunix (windows default) using Grub.

After quite a bit of research she plopped for the HP Envy 15-t convertable which, by price, size, tablet "wow" factor, and having that i7 option, was good for her research. She got it just before the batch of us all went on vacation, so she and I spent some time borking Linux Mint onto the thing.

So far, so good. We did a Linux UEFI installation after shrinking the Windows 8.1 partition a bit. Then we got into the interesting dual booting gambits. As others may have mentioned, this semi-standard installation results in a situation where where, if one hits the ESC key on cold boot, one can then hit F9; then, there in all its wonder, is the so-called "ubunto" entry, as well as Windows 8.1, grub, and a UEFI item. Select ubunto, up comes Mint. Select grub, and one gets the normal grub, select-your-os boot entries. Select Windows 8.1, get Windows 8.1.  Select UEFI, and, like stacking Russian Kachinka dolls, there are, more or less, the same choices. Cool. But all of this means sitting there like a hawk, typing the ESC key to get to that F9 prompt. If one doesn't do that, Windows 8.1 is what you get.

One would think that booting into UEFI, as is possible with other manufacturer's UEFI installations, would get to that dual-boot UEFI installation. Or that the UEFI-compatible GRUB2 entry could be slected, all under the F10->boot settings entries. Nope. There's but one entry in there, it's Hard Disk, and, when you do that, Windows 8 is what you get... Even though the F9 key does show all the good stuff.

It's even more interesting than that. As it happens, Windows, at least since Windows XP and, I think, dating back to Windows NT, supports the idea of booting into different OSs. This was primarily in there so that one could, say, boot selectively into an alternate Windows environment (Windows 3.1 back with Windows NT; Windows XP when playing with Windows 7, etc.), and it's slower than any variety of grub, since one has to load a small but significant amount of Windows to get to the point where one gets to choose, but there it is: It's officially supported by Microsoft. In the past, I've booted into versions of Linux using the tool, admittedly on Windows XP. Windows 8 and 8.1 still supports this model, even with UEFI, and they have this command set that allows to set up the boot order, delay time, and all that. Do it right and one gets, very early in the cold boot process, a selection of buttons drawn in inimitiable Windows 8.1 style, with names of ones choice in there; click on the right button and one is off to the races, either with a grub entry or the entry of one's preferred Linux (or whatever) OS, so long as that other OS has a proper, cryptographically signed boot entry in the UEFI partition.  And, of course, the default Windows 8/8.1 button as well. Unless, of course, one is doing this on an HP-built UEFI based computer. One can get the buttons - but if one clicks on anything other than Windows 8/8.1, the system hangs until one powers it down and back up again. This, when the ESC-F9 trick is also working.

Another researcher working his way through all this (the above was all carefully discovered by yours truly, now I'm reporting someone else's work) has figured out what's happening: HP's UEFI software purposely overwrites any changes, cryptographically signed or not, secure-boot compatible or not, in the UEFI partition, on each and every cold boot.

Note that this is not part of the UEFI standard.

As it happens, there's a particular spot in the UEFI partition that contains a file. If there is only one OS on the computer, then that file is a pointer to the boot file in OS's directory tree in the UEFI partition.  With HP, that file, from the factory, points at /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi, which will give you Windows 8.1. Fine, cool for a computer straight out of the factory, why not?

However, when one installs Mint or some other UEFI-compatible OS that has its own little directory tree and cryptographically signed boot loader, said file is changed to have more than one entry. Until one reboots one's HP computer, and that file gets overwritten by the factory default. Oops. And the computer auto-boots into Windows 8/8.1.

It appears that even using the Windows 8.1 tools, that also modify that file, also has that file getting overwritten on boot - which borks the loader built into Windows 8.1, making it hang the works.

The ESC-F9 trick works, I'm guessing, by the fact that HP's UEFI code isn't quite permanently DOA, but can find the alternative UEFI directories, $DIETY only knows how.

Hokay. I can sort-of-understand HP's desire to keep malware from monkeying with the boot sequence, keep calls to the help line under control, and all that. If one were playing with the old-timey boot sector stuff, locking that down might make sense. But putting that UEFI file under overwrite-under-all-circumstances smacks of one of two things:

1. Somebody paid HP to do that to make it difficult to install alternative operating systems.

2. It's a real, no-kidding bug put in there by a programmer, or by a requirements writer, was wasn't thinking.

Remember, all that secure boot and cryptographically-signed UEFI stuff is to prevent malware from doing stupid things. And enough people were involved with that stuff to make it unlikely that malware could get in by that method. Excepting potential idiots like the NSA. I have a habit reading various security newsletters on the web; I like to read about train wrecks. So far, I haven't heard of any malware writers or security researchers successfully targeting UEFI. So, why make it "more" secure by overwriting that file?

This mis behavior is screaming for a BIOS update for a fix. And it's not old computers: It's what's shipping today.

My daughter's reaction to all this? I quote: "Had I known that HP was doing this with their computers, I would have ditched this thing and bought a Lenovo."

"But the Lenovo ones didn't come in 15 inch models."

"I would have bought a standard laptop. All the comments on ZDNET say that Lenovo works well with Linux."

And there you have it. HP: Are you listening? Do you know just how many university people are using your computers? People who have to run Linux at times? That's market share you're about to lose.

Oh, yeah. One last thing: Mint works fine on the convertable laptop, once booted. Mousepad and all. She hasn't mucked with the touchscreen in that OS, but that's not what she's doing in there, anyway.

[fritzmark]

Thanks for this insights. So my Question at the support. When does a BIOS update came around? Or is there already one and I missed it?