So here's what happened. I got a Dell xps 13 and figured out how to get it to dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 10.
Everything was working great.
I switched out the ssd for a 500gb one because I only had the 128gb and with dual booting it would be nice to have a bit more space.
The new ssd works fine, but when I was preparing to transition from the one ssd to the other, I made the mistake of trying to make a windows recovery drive. It totally messed with the bios/UEFI settings and I was no longer able to easily switch from one or the other on my old ssd. The only thing that would show up was the Windows Boot Manager. I didn't think it would change or mess with the boot settings, I figured it would only copy, not change.
Anyway, I just continued forward and even though I was able to install Ubuntu again on my new ssd with slightly more trouble than usual, it seems that it is still giving me grief because after just figuring out how to install Windows 10 on another partition in a slightly different manager than last time, doing that did a similar thing as trying to create the Windows recovery drive on my old ssd. Now I am no longer able to get to my Ubuntu partition again and it is only showing the Windows Boot Manager. I've tried changing the Secure Boot option and taking a look at Legacy, but even though I can see my Ubuntu desktop clearly still exists when I use a trial version from a usb, it just won't show up in UEFI like it was before.
Does anyone have any idea what's going on here? This seems like it should be fixable, but I haven't found a solution yet.
Best Answer
When you installed Windows it replaced the the Grub (Linux Boot Manager) with Windows Boot Manager. The Windows Boot Manager doesn't see Ubuntu. You'll have to replace the Windows Boot Manager with Grub, which can see both Windows and Linux and will give you both as a boot option.
You can reinstall Grub with these steps:
$ sudo mount /dev/sdX# /mnt
$ for i in /sys /proc /run /dev; do sudo mount --bind "$i" "/mnt/$i"; done
$ sudo mount /dev/sdY# /mnt/boot/efi
$ sudo chroot /mnt
# grub-install /dev/sdZ
# update-grub
# exit
$ for i in /sys /proc /run /dev; do sudo umount "/mnt/$i"; done
$ sudo umount /mnt/boot/efi
$ exit
You can identify your drives and partitions with this command:
After you have completed those steps, you will now see
Ubuntu
as a boot option. Boot to it and you'll have the both Ubuntu and Windows as a menu choice.Notice: The
$
and the#
part of the command-lines are the terminal prompts. It's important to show that the$
prompt is a normal user, requiringsudo
to elevate the command. The#
prompt which happens after chroot is a terminal logged in as root. Thesudo
prefix isn't required. While, for security, it's discouraged, some people always work under a#
prompt by executingsudo su -
before they start work. The$
prompt andsudo
is the official Ubuntu recommended method.