my system drives are based on these hardware parts
1: SSD 250 GB
2: HDD 1TB
3: External HDD 2TB
I use my SSD for Windows 8.1 and all other related stuff, like, installing software etc. The HDD is used for installing games on it, and the external HDD is, well, just an external HDD.
So what I wanted to do is, to install Linux Mint 17 next to Windows 8.1 Since I heard there might be problems with machines that run with UEFI, I searched for a tutorial to do it right.
I used this tutorial here. I shrunk my SSD by 60GB, started Linux Mint from USB and installed it.
According to the tutorial, I divided the free space into three parts
SWAP -> 4GB
EXT4 in path / -> 20GB
EXT4 in path /home -> 36GB
The tutorial said, I should install the bootloader in the partition that says efi. However, there was no such partition, so I created one by my own from the rest of the unused space I had. (Maybe, this was the problem)
I then installed Linux Mint, and can now use it without any problems. However, I can't get back into Windows 8.1.
When the computer starts and I hit F8 to select boot device, and I select the SSD where Win 8. is, I get the error message
This is not a bootable disk. Please insert a bootable floppy
Some people told me, that I need to select Win 8 out of the grub loader and not out of the device selector.
When I pressed ESC repeatedly the grub loader showed up, but only Linux Mint was in it.
What I then did, was the following: I booted into the live cd again (with USB Stick) and performed these commands
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair &&
sudo apt-get update &&
sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair &&
boot-repair
However, the only thing this did, was that I now have "Ubuntu" instead of Linux Mint in the bootloader, why so ever.
Then, I tried to update grub. This is the output
sudo update-grub2
[sudo] password for tzfrs:
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-44-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-44-generic
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-37-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-37-generic
No volume groups found
Adding boot menu entry for EFI firmware configuration
done
I also tried update-grub instead of update-grub2
This is my grub configuration file
# If you change this file, run 'update-grub' afterwards to update
# /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
# For full documentation of the options in this file, see:
# info -f grub -n 'Simple configuration'
GRUB_DEFAULT=0
#GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=true
GRUB_TIMEOUT=10
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""
# Uncomment to enable BadRAM filtering, modify to suit your needs
# This works with Linux (no patch required) and with any kernel that obtains
# the memory map information from GRUB (GNU Mach, kernel of FreeBSD ...)
#GRUB_BADRAM="0x01234567,0xfefefefe,0x89abcdef,0xefefefef"
# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only)
#GRUB_TERMINAL=console
# The resolution used on graphical terminal
# note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE
# you can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo'
#GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480
# Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true
# Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries
#GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"
# Uncomment to get a beep at grub start
#GRUB_INIT_TUNE="480 440 1"
Then, I tried to add it manually, by following this tutorial, but I'm already stuck at Step 1 where I should find my EFI partition with this command
sudo parted /dev/sda print | grep -i efi
However, there is no output. I also changed /dev/sda to something else, but still nothing. When I type in df -aTh I don't even see anything called EFI. So, where exactly is this efi thingy so I can continue this tutorial?
This is the ouptut of df -aTh
Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sdb6 ext4 19G 6,8G 11G 40% /
proc proc 0 0 0 - /proc
sysfs sysfs 0 0 0 - /sys
none tmpfs 4,0K 0 4,0K 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
none fusectl 0 0 0 - /sys/fs/fuse/connections
none debugfs 0 0 0 - /sys/kernel/debug
none securityfs 0 0 0 - /sys/kernel/security
none efivarfs 0 0 0 - /sys/firmware/efi/efivars
udev devtmpfs 7,8G 12K 7,8G 1% /dev
devpts devpts 0 0 0 - /dev/pts
tmpfs tmpfs 1,6G 1,6M 1,6G 1% /run
none tmpfs 5,0M 0 5,0M 0% /run/lock
none tmpfs 7,9G 21M 7,8G 1% /run/shm
none tmpfs 100M 12K 100M 1% /run/user
none pstore 0 0 0 - /sys/fs/pstore
/dev/sdb7 ext4 36G 1009M 33G 3% /home
binfmt_misc binfmt_misc 0 0 0 - /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc
systemd cgroup 0 0 0 - /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd
gvfsd-fuse fuse.gvfsd-fuse 0 0 0 - /run/user/1000/gvfs
/dev/sdc1 vfat 30G 1,5G 28G 6% /media/tzfrs/KINGSTON
So, does anyone know, how I can get Windows 8.1 again into my bootloader? I can see the SSD partition with Windows in Linux Mint, so it's def. still there.
