15/8/2014 Dual Booting Windows 8 OEM and Peppermint OS 3 | Linux Experiments

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This entry was posted in Linux and tagged PeppermintOS, Windows 8 on January 13, 2013
[http://www.sarahkempdesigns.com/now/dual-booting-windows-8-oem-and-peppermint-os-3/] .

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Dual Booting Windows 8 OEM and Peppermint OS 3

I recently bought an Acer Aspire V5 (V5-171-9661) with Windows 8 pre-installed. It includes options
for either legacy BIOS boot mode or UEFI. Windows 8 is installed under UEFI, so if I want to be able
to dual boot without changing my boot mode between, I needed to install my Linux OS in EFI mode.
Did I mention I dont know anything about Linux or bootloaders and had never heard of EFI, GPT, or
MBR before this process? GRUB used to be a word (one I never used) for food.

I decided to keep Windows 8 primarily because I didnt want to wish later that I had kept it, and hey,
I paid for it (not because I wanted it, but because I couldnt nd a decent ultrabook without it). I
chose PeppermintOS based on what I read here.

I am no expert, but I can tell you what worked for me, and there is little enough of that available for
Windows 8 and UEFI right now that I think it is worth sharing.

Firstly, Im not addressing Secure Boot. I was able to disable it on my machine. You probably can
too, as long as you are not running a specialty (ARM) netbook or tablet sort of thing. At rst it didnt
look like I could disable Secure Boot without switching my boot mode to Legacy (BIOS), but it turns
out all I had to do to get access to the Secured Boot option was to set an administrator password in

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the Boot Con guration of my machine (F2 on start for me). Once I had the admin password set, I was
able to change my boot order, boot mode, and set Secure Boot to disabled. This is the perfect set
up for the simple Peppermint install I wanted! Except now my LiveUSB wont boot.

Im getting ahead of myself. I have already gone into Windows and run diskmgmt.msc to shrink my
main partition to its minimum size, then format the unused portion so it shows as Free Space. (You
are going to need this.) If you have as hard of a time nding things in Windows 8 as I do, it might
help to know that you can pull up a Run box with the Windows key + R. Now we are back on track.

I made my LiveUSB using MultiBootUSB as covered here. There is no mention of EFI or BIOS mode in
those instructions (which is probably why my LiveUSB doesnt boot when my computer is booting in
UEFI mode). I found a forum post somewhere that mentioned that they had been able to install in
EFI mode by rst installing in BIOS mode and then doing a boot repair. I already know my LiveUSB
will boot in BIOS mode (though it will not in UEFI mode) and I have been researching all this too long
already so I switch back to Legacy to see where I end up. Sure enough, now I can run Peppermint
from my LiveUSB, but when I click the very conveniently located install Peppermint icon on the
desktop, I only get through two easy screens before it starts asking questions I dont understand.

To clarify, the installer does not recognize my

Windows installation. It says I have no OS on this
computer and asks would I like to erase everything
and install Peppermint all over everywhere? OMG
NO! (Fear of commitment.) But aha, there is another
option to do Something Else very mysterious. I
click and am presented with the opportunity to
redistribute and (yikes!) reformat the various
partitions on my harddrive. There are several
My partition table after boot repair has run (post install)
partitions already existing I know Windows is on
one, there is a recovery partition as well, and there
is the large portion of free space that I allocated inside Windows earlier. I click on that and then
add

I am presented with the option to set how much space I want. I will skip all the wrong things I did
here and tell you what worked for me. I made an ext4 type 100 MB partition at /boot. Its name
automatically changed to grub. I made a second partition of type swap that was 4000 MB (4 GB). I
then made a nal partition that used the rest of my free space at /. I can tell you that not all of these
are required (speci cally the /boot partition appears unnecessary since it is Free Space now that
my Boot Repair has run), but this is how mine were laid out when I did the install and it worked for
me. I click next but I get a stern warning that my hardware usually requires a 1 MB partition of type
Reserved BIOS boot area and my installation may work without it, but I will need to repair the

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bootloader.

The partition table format in use on your disks normally requires you to create a separate
partition for boot loader code. This partition should be marked for use as Reserved BIOS boot
area and should be at least 1 MB in size. Note that this is not the same as a partition mounted on
/boot.

If you do not go back to the partitioning menu and correct this error, bootloader installation may
fail later, although it may still be possible to install the boot loader to a partition.

But, I have already tried this method and had no joy, so I am not worried about this error anymore.
OK, I say, and the installation proceeds beautifully, asking for my keyboard type and username, etc.
I am alerted the installation went well, and also that I have recieved a fatal Grub error.

Executing grub-install /dev/sda6 failed. This is a fatal error.

Sure enough, restarting pulls up a screen from MultiBoot USB that asks what I want to boot from
(HDD or Ubuntu 12.10 or Peppermint 3) just like it did before I installed. I want to try booting from
HDD, even though I recieved a fatal Grub error on install so there is no way this is going to work.
Sure enough, I get a new BIOS type screen saying Booting inde nitely. Way too long anyway, I
have to assume it wasnt getting anywhere. Back to LiveUSB to try to get this resolved. I am able to
boot back into Peppermint with the LiveUSB. I do research and learn about this Boot Repair thing.
Sounds like what I need. I run the commands.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair && boot-repair

It does a bunch of stu , then pulls up a box asking what I want to do, the Recommended Repair
that works for most things, Create a BootInfo Summary, or Advanced Settings. I love advanced
settings, and I gure the thing that works for most stu isnt what I want since everything Ive been
reading talks about how Windows 8 on UEFI and Linux are in new territory and everything is
sketchy. So advanced settings say something about repairing EFI and and reinstalling Grub. I hadnt
told this computer I wanted to install in EFI yet, but it seems to know I want that, which sounds great
to me! (Note: All this EFI stu is not documented on the Boot Repair page I linked) And I had a fatal
Grub error, so repairing that sounds good as well! I am loving this Boot Repair thing.

I hit go ahead and it does some more stu , pulls up a couple of commands it wants me to run,
which I do, and eventually it says it successfully repaired. It points out that I should be sure to boot
into EFI mode next time I restart. Sounds great! That was my plan all along and I am thrilled at the

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prospect of it working, though I have done nothing to deserve it. I reboot and go back into my Boot
Settings and switch back from Legacy to UEFI (ensuring Secure Boot is still disabled). F10 to save
settings and bam I am shown a list of installed operating systems including Peppermint and
Windows 8! I can boot to either just by selecting it from the list, or just let it sit for 10 seconds and it
automatically boots into Peppermint. Perfect.

If anyone has any input on accomplishing this in a more direct way, or sees something Ive done
wrong here, please leave a comment!

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