Ubuntu – Unable to repair boot with Windows 8 and Ubuntu 13.04

boot-repairdual-bootinstallationuefiwindows 8

I have a Samsung laptop NP350E7C. It comes with Windows 8 and I'm trying to install Ubuntu 13.04. The first time I installed it with the live USB, it worked, but windows stopped working. I repaired windows and now there is not way to reboot on Ubuntu. I even tried to use windows' boot manager instead of GRUB2 with no success.

I then followed the instructions at http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/uefi?redirect=1 (disabled fastboot and secureboot in the BIOS) and re-installed ubuntu. I then had the windows blue screen as predicted by this tutorial and I could repair it with the instructions from their link.

Than, I needed to repair ubuntu's boot with boot-repair. Using the recommended options, I always get to this error:

An error occurred during the repair.

Locked-ESP detected. You may want to retry after creating a /boot/efi
partition (FAT32, 100MB~250MB, start of the disk, boot flag). This can
be performed via tools such as gParted. Then select this partition via
the [Separate /boot/efi partition:] option of [Boot Repair].

According to this thread http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2112273 the problem is that the file /EFI/ubuntu/grubx64.efi is corrupted and then if we can remove it and run boot repair again, everything should work fine. I then removed the file using the instructions at How can I remove Ubuntu from the UEFI boot options? but every time, I run boot repair I still get the same error.

My logs are at http://paste.ubuntu.com/6081052/

Any help is very appreciated.
Thanks again

Best Answer

See this bug report. It includes a workaround, which I quote:

  1. via Gparted create another EFI partition (FAT32, 200MB, located in the first 100GB of the disk)
  2. move the 'boot' flag on it
  3. make Ubuntu use this new ESP (eg via Boot-Repair --> Recommended Repair).

See also the error message that you quoted in your question.