UEFI/secureboot preventing linux bootup, but want win8 dualboot

[MadmanRB]

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Okay now I have an issue with windows, namely secureboot and UEFI.
This is not for my computer but for my fathers machine.
As an early birthday present I got my father a HP Pavilion laptop that came preinstalled with windows 8.1 but he didnt like it and wanted a dual boot.
So I gave him Ubuntu 13.10 as it has UEFI support and everything was fine until we updated to Ubuntu 14.04.
Sadly it did not load windows via grub and windows would fail to boot.
However after repairing the windows boot manager I knew I had to reinstall linux which would normally be fine but now windows and windows alone now boots, no grub, no nothing.
I heard recently of this story:

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Wind....t-434009.shtml

However I checked everything and windows seems to be the cause of my woes.
As does UEFI
Now we would like to keep windows on this machine however I am thinking of removing the /efi partition

Will windows 8 still work if I did this?
Or am I trapped in windows 8 hell?
I sure hope not

[elija]

Can you not just turn secure boot off in the UEFI or BIOS what-ever it's called these days?

[yancek]

So I gave him Ubuntu 13.10 as it has UEFI support and everything was fine until we updated to Ubuntu 14.04.

Almost all Linux systems have supported UEFI for several years. Your problems are more related to the microsoft required Secure Boot function. I don't use Ubuntu regularly but, I would expect that if you had run: sudo update-grub after updating to 14.04 you would not have had a problem. You are not clear about what happened, whether you no longer saw a windows entry in the boot menu or if you saw it and selected it and it did not boot??

However after repairing the windows boot manager I knew I had to reinstall linux

No, you didn't. You just needed to reinstall the Ubuntu Grub bootloader and then run: update-grub. A windows system won't boot a Linux system. There are probably workarounds. I remember the process for xp but vista and later windows versions have a different bootloader including different files and thus a different process. By 'repairing' the windows boot manager, you've probably overwritten some Ubuntu Grub files. A windows system usually won't detect Linux and certainly won't create a boot entry for it.

I don't use uefi on any machines so the best I can do is refer you to the link below at the ubuntu forums. The link you posted above is broken, or at least gave me a 404 not found error.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI

[MadmanRB]

Can you not just turn secure boot off in the UEFI or BIOS what-ever it's called these days?

Yes I tried that, the computer still boots into windows 8.

Almost all Linux systems have supported UEFI for several years. Your problems are more related to the microsoft required Secure Boot function. I don't use Ubuntu regularly but, I would expect that if you had run: sudo update-grub after updating to 14.04 you would not have had a problem. You are not clear about what happened, whether you no longer saw a windows entry in the boot menu or if you saw it and selected it and it did not boot??

Yes windows would not boot when selected, it would fail to boot in.

No, you didn't. You just needed to reinstall the Ubuntu Grub bootloader and then run: update-grub. A windows system won't boot a Linux system. There are probably workarounds. I remember the process for xp but vista and later windows versions have a different bootloader including different files and thus a different process. By 'repairing' the windows boot manager, you've probably overwritten some Ubuntu Grub files. A windows system usually won't detect Linux and certainly won't create a boot entry for it.

I only re-installed linux due to the boot repair not working plus I wanted to try 14.04 again from a fresh install perspective on the machine.
Still nothing worked and windows still is the only thing that boots up.
I have tried every method I know of to get linux booting on this thing and the only thing that works is hitting f9 but we cant keep doing that each time we want to use linux.

[yancek]

This is a situation where it would have paid to take notes. You successfully installed Ubuntu and according to your original post, dual-booting it was successful so I would guess the everything you tried doesn't include the way you originally got it to work. Out of curioslity, what exactly did not work on 13.10 that prompted you to upgrade?

I think it might be a good idea to check your BIOS again and make sure Secure Boot is disabled and you might check to see if you have an option to set Legacy boot. There also might be an option for Fastboot and if you have that, disable it. So you have reinstalled Ubuntu 14.04 now, correct? But it won't boot. What happened when you tried the options suggested at the Ubuntu forums from the link above? I would think that would be your best bet to resolve the problem. There are other options besides the boot repair which might work.

[MadmanRB]

Okay with no answers I have decided to reset the computer to factory settings.
A factory reset would eliminate the issue, overkill yes but I cannot wait anymore on fixing this.

[docbop]

However after repairing the windows boot manager I knew I had to reinstall linux which would normally be fine but now windows and windows alone now boots, no grub, no nothing.

You answered your own question in your first post, you put the Windows boot manager back on the boot sector so Linux can't boot. You needed to get grub back onto the boot sector.

[MadmanRB]

And how do I do that then, I tried everything else and I am past the point of annoyed right now.

I tried boot-repair, EasyBCD, re installing grub, I just tried a factory reset and a reinstall of GRUB for petes sake and windows still boots up first unless we hit F9.
I turned off secure boot, I enabled legacy mode in the bios, I turned off fast boot in windows, I tried rEFInd, every solution given to me in every last stupid page on UEFI.
Nothing works here so there must be some solution, so if anyone has any knowledge of how to boot into grub without hitting F9 I would very much like to know.
I am giving this another 24 hours but no solutions and I am nuking windows, screw it anyhow I dont care if my father wants a dual boot anymore this has made me mad beyond the point of no return.

This is a situation where it would have paid to take notes. You successfully installed Ubuntu and according to your original post, dual-booting it was successful so I would guess the everything you tried doesn't include the way you originally got it to work. Out of curioslity, what exactly did not work on 13.10 that prompted you to upgrade?

14.04 is LTS, Ubuntu 13.10 will be unsupported in two months or so from now.

[elija]

Have a read through this page

Non-LTS Ubuntu releases do have an almost ridiculously short support life, but I suppose if you are running non-lts you're going to be updating to each new release anyway.

[MadmanRB]

I said I already tried re-installing grub, dont you people READ???????

ARGGH!

Unless you suggest something I already didnt not try please dont waste my time I am not in a good mood about this and want answers already.

How many times must I say the same stupid thing over and over again before I get an answer that works huh?


Here I will put that in big bold caps locked coloreds text so I dont get another useless reply here:


I ALREADY TRIED RE INSTALLING GRUB!


I am beyond frustrated with this issue, I am not only mad about it I am close to driving an axe into this laptop