Fix Ubuntu 12.04 and 14.04 Installation Issues on Lenovo S205

12.0414.04grub2uefi

I've read a lot of similar topics, but nothing helped. Check out my little sad story:

  1. I made bootable USB with UNetbootin. I tried Ubuntu 12.04 and 14.04, linuxmint 17.1, fedora kde, zorin.
  2. Before i upgraded BIOS, which is actually UEFI (absolutely no settings except boot sequence) i got "Boot in secure mode" quick message. After i made BIOS upgrade i see quick message "\EFI\BOOT\fallback.efi": 14" and grub starting after that.
  3. Grub didnt see my Win7, but i thought its ok.
  4. Installation goes fine, at the end it asks to reboot i press 'ok do it', but after reboot i see that message (point 2) again, grub starts and doesnt see my fresh Ubuntu.
  5. I tried to make EFI first partition manually while installing and before it with gParted(I DID IT A LOT OF TIMES) but nothing helped.

Best Answer

  • Create a live USB for Ubuntu 64-bit (e.g. with UNetBootin)
  • While on the live USB installation, select "Do Something Else" and make /dev/sda1 an "EFI" partition with size 150MB. It must be a minimum of 100MB, recommended 200MB.
  • Partition the rest of the drive however you want ( / and swap, / and /home and swap, whatever). Use primary partitions only (you might be able to get away with an extended for /home but I haven't tried it). This is my setup:
  • /dev/sda1 150MB EFI
  • /dev/sda2 20GB ext4 /
  • /dev/sda3 5GB swap
  • /dev/sda4 50GB ext4 /home
  • Set the boot installer to install to /dev/sda1 (or your EFI partition #). Do not use /dev/sda.
  • Install
  • Pray
  • Awesome, now Ubuntu is installed
  • Restart your laptop, and boot back into the live USB
  • Now, mount your EFI partition somewhere like this: "mount /dev/sda1 /mnt"
  • Change directories into the "EFI" directory in the mounted folder "cd /mnt/EFI"
  • Copy over the super secret important EFI files "cp -rfv ubuntu boot"
  • CD into the boot directory "cd boot"
  • Finally, move grubx64.efi to bootx64.efi "mv grubx64.efi bootx64.efi"
  • Restart, and you should finally have a working Ubuntu/Xubuntu 14.04 on your dumbass Lenovo S205 computer! Yay!

To get WiFi working, change boot order in Bios to boot from network first.

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