I have a Windows 7 machine I upgraded to Windows 8, so as a result I have BIOS and not UEFI. I attempted to install Ubuntu 12.10 alongside Windows 8 yesterday, and accidentally used wubi without understanding it had massive errors.
After completely formatting my hard drive and re-installing Windows 8, I want to attempt installing Ubuntu 12.10 again. I made the bootable USB again, but when I went to install Ubuntu, I didn't get the option to install Ubuntu alongside Windows 8. As a result, I have tried making a bootable USB for Ubuntu 13.10, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, and even Ubuntu 11.10 but none of them gave me the option of installing Ubuntu alongside Windows 8.
In order to rectify this issue, I figured I must partition my drive myself and continue with the 'something else' installing option of Ubuntu 12.10. Would it be better to partition my drive in Windows or the bootable Ubuntu USB? Second, is the fact that Windows 8 isn't recognised by Ubuntu indicative of some errors with the hard drive or my computer that I should fix before I attempt to do something manually?
Best Answer
Fact that you had Windows 7 preinstalled doesn't mean that you don't have UEFI. You probably have the UEFI boot disabled by default.
To install Ubuntu alongside Windows manually you have to have 2 partitions
/ - root partition (your system partition)
swap - swap if you are planning on putting your computer into sleep mode (generally swap = amount of RAM you have + a bit more)
Or you can have 3 partitions The same two as described above and
/Home partition - where all your data being saved. If you do not create this partition that Root partition will be used as a Home as well. generally it means that if you will reinstall the OS you won't have a possible to save partition with the data.
Then when you decide how you are going to partition your drive you want to select where to install grub. Commonly it goes to
So if you have that already selected, don't touch it, either wise change it.
And that's it, you can click Install button. Ignore the message about missing boot partition. I have been installing OS without it all the same and it runs perfectly fine.
After that you follow basic GUI installation process.