I've tried two days now to get ubuntu AND windows 7 to dual boot…
What is the current status?
I have completely removed win 8 and installed ubuntu 13.04 to the whole SSD.
You may ask, why I have done this? Because MacAfee destroyed my win8 completely so I couldnt even boot win8 anymore. and I also couldnt get into any repair menus!
ok, lets go on. After installing ubuntu, I used LVM to make two logical partitions, one ubuntu root partition with 40GB, and one for windows, 180GB. There is also a efi-partition and a swap partition afaik.
My idea now is to install windows 7 on the logical partition next to ubuntu.
In the UEFI boot menu I disabled "secure boot".
Option A: Try to boot from USB (cost: 8 hours, result: epic fail!):
- created a bootable usb
- plugged in laptop
- started laptop
- pressed ESC immediately
- the usb device was listed
- I chose the usb device to boot
- nothing happens, instead the defaul Ubuntu grub 2 shows up!
So my next idea is to try to boot from a burned win7 dvd!!
Option B: Try to boot from dvd:
- bought a USb disk writer
- bought dvds
- burned my win 7 iso directly to dvd with K3B(ubuntu burn program)
- turned off pc, and turned on again
- pressed ESC to get to the boot options
- NO cdrom Boot option available!!!!
here is a screenshot of the contents of win7 dvd(which I think is the same when it was on usb) :
THE NEXT STEP
Next I must add a new boot option in efi for the dvd, so the computer can boot from it.
But I dont know how exactly the Path to the *.efi File is:
the "add boot option" interface looks like this:
so my question finally is what is the path to the .efi file when its on a dvd?
UPDATE: SOLVED(kind of)
Thank you guys for trying to help me 🙂
I ended up solving this mess the way that I only have windows 8. Sorry, but after 2,5 days (8+8+4 hours) I have no more energy to try out more things.
So what I did to get windows 8 on the whole disk was:
- Go to efi menu
- Disable Secure Boot Enable CSM (I think otherwise my dvd drive
would'nt be recognized) - Stick in ubuntu live usb
- open terminal
- use fdisk and delete EVERY PARTITION (gparted wasnt able to do
anything of help) - shut down the notebook
- plug out ubuntu stick
- plug in dvd with windows8 via extern dvd writer
- start notebook, and boot from win8 dvd(win7 didnt work, it told me
"windows can't be installed on this drive because it's a GPT
partition style. WTF? ) - installed windows (end of the story)
now when i need ubuntu i run a vm or boot from live usb.
UPDATE 2: THE REAL SOLUTION
After a few days of Win8 I recognized that not all of my old win7 programs worked, even with several compatibility options. So I decided to give it another try.
First I downloaded Rufus and wanted to create a bootable win7 usb stick with it. So I selected my win7 professional N iso and pressed OK. Unfortunately, it failed with an error message like "error while formatting" or something. After that I realized that my usb drive was literally destroyed. I tried to reformat it with windows8 partition tool, but that didnt work.
Again I searched for partition tools in the web and I found what I now think is the best tool for partitioning ever! It is – drum roll – Parted Magic v. 2013.06.15 !!
Steps to solution begin here
- I downloaded the ISO file and burned it to a dvd.
- made a backup of my files
- rebooted my laptop with the parted magic image
- Started GParted (other Gparted versions didnt work)
- Created a complete new empty Partition table in GPT scheme (windows 7 can only be installed on GPT partion tables when the boot manager is UEFI, and it's 64bit systems)
- Created a NTFS-partition of half the ssd size, for my data
- extremely important you must left out an unpartitioned space of at least 25GB(in my case I left 100GB unpartitioned) because in the installation setup of windows, windows automatically creates all the partitions he wants and needs for a clean windows installment.
- Applied all the changes(so my whole disk was formatted an all data is lost. therefore I made a backup of my files)
- Put in windows7 installation dvd
- Reboot, now the win7 installation loads
- Select the unpartitioned space to install
- Everything goes fine. You now have a perfect clean windows7 installation!
- You may need to install missing drivers for your specific hardware. In my case I downloaded drivers for my Asus UX31A. After that all was setup.
More info about step 7, that lead me to the solution: Windows and GPT FAQ
Thank you all for your help.
Best Answer
How exactly did you do this? I suspect you followed some old tutorial and ended up with a non-UEFI USB installer.
The easiest way to create a UEFI USB installer for Win7 is by using Rufus on a Windows PC (see Partition scheme and target system type in screenshot below):
You can do it manually if you want, but why go to all that trouble?