Ubuntu – GRUB doesn’t show up installing Ubuntu 14.04 alongside Windows 10, on a UEFI x64 HP laptop

14.04dual-bootwindows 10

I'm trying to install Ubuntu 14.04.3 alongside Windows 10, on a x64 UEFI HP laptop.

I burned the Ubuntu (64bit version) on the usb using UNetbootin, proceeded without problems with the installation of Ubuntu, and then rebooted the laptop. However, this resulted in the laptop just booting into windows with no grub appearing.

I consequently tried a variety of things. For example I followed the steps outlined in this guide:

  1. Disabled UEFI secure boot and Windows 10 fast boot option
  2. Reinstalled again Ubuntu 14.04 from the USB
  3. Ran boot-repair from the ubuntu live installation. Boot-repair completed without giving errors. It said to have successfully repaired the GRUB, and in case the GRUB still didn't show up to run the following command on a Windows 10 administrator terminal: bcdedit /set {bootmgr} path \EFI\ubuntu\shimx64.efi.
  4. From Windows 10 I run the above command, which executed without errors. Rebooting the system however the GRUB still doesn't show up. I also tried the slightly different version of the same command given in the above linked page, but still no luck.

I'm not sure what else I can try to make it work, I've never had such problems in installing a linux distribution alongside Windows on other laptops.
Any help is appreciated at this point.

Update

I did found a way to boot into Ubuntu through the GRUB. Holding down F11 during the booting process, Windows will boot into the blue "safe mode". In there if you select the "chose a booting device" option you will have the choice to boot from a series of devices, including GRUB and Ubuntu (which however both result in booting from the GRUB). Here is a photo of this menu (sorry for the non-english language, the title says "Use a device"):

enter image description here

While this method works, it is obviously a pain to have to do this procedure every time, but this proves that grub is installed correctly. "Only" the boot loader priority seems to be messed up. How can I force the boot loader to boot into GRUB instead of windows?

Additional information:

  1. The laptop is an HP Notebook – 15-ac119nl (ENERGY STAR)

  2. Here is a snapshot of the partition table given by gparted:
    enter image description here

  3. Here is the output of bcdedit on Windows 10:

enter image description here

Best Answer

I know this is old but for anyone who comes across this, heres how I solved it. It based on the info in the link oldfred posted.

Problem

I had the same problem on a HP Laptop. There are a lot of laptops which love to boot windows as priority despite what you configure. You need to overwrite the windows boot manager with the grub. It's a bit of a hack, but it's worked great for me and others. Windows will overwrite this every time it updates.

Solution

I created an SH (script file) with the following commands and run it as sudo. (make sure your boot partition is mounted at /boot/efi, which it should be by default)

7z a /boot/efi/EFI_`date +\%d\%m\%Y`.7z /boot/efi/EFI/
cp -a /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu/* /boot/efi/EFI/Boot/
mv /boot/efi/EFI/Boot/grubx64.efi /boot/efi/EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi
cp /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu/grubx64.efi /boot/efi/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/
mv /boot/efi/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/grubx64.efi /boot/efi/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi

Notes

The script basically backs up the current EFI configuration (using 7zip, modify this to your preferred flavor of backup), then overwrites the efi boot scripts of the windows boot manager.

It will need to be run everytime windows does a major update.

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