Wow.
(Sent from iPhone, so please accept my apologies in advance for any spelling or grammatical errors.)
> On Aug 25, 2014, at 7:57 PM, Andrew Daviel <advax@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> (apologies for the length - there are questions at the end...)
>
> I've been running Linux for 20 years, and done a lot of dual-boots. I know
> that's old-school now, but I run Linux 95% of the time yet don't want to
> lose a Windows system I've paid for - but I've never tried removing it
> from a system and reinstalling the same licenced copy inside a virtual machine.
>
> I bought a new laptop back in April this year, after trying to check
> online for Linux certification to match what was in the local stores.
> There's so many models and variants that's almost impossible, but I found
> various "HP Pavilion 14" in www.ubuntu.com/certification
> and a couple of "HP EliteBook" in hardware.redhat.com/laptop.
> So I bought an "HP Pavilion 14-n228ca TouchSmart Notebook",
> which came with Windows 8.1 installed.
>
> So I start off doing what I've done on previous occasions - get into the
> BIOS, change the boot order, boot a CentOS 6 installation CD as used on
> my desktop, go into rescue mode and look at the partitions. Normally I'd
> use fdisk, but that says it doesn't understand GPT and I should use
> parted. There's 5 partitions, so I use resizefs to shrink the main NTFS
> data partition, then delete the partition and recreate it shorter at the
> same start location. Then reboot the CD into install mode, create a
> Linux partition in the free space, and install CentOS, which adds a
> choice of "Other" in grub.conf to boot Windows.
>
> Then I boot CentOS and finish the install - a couple of glitches; it needs
> a kernel parameter "iommu=soft" to get the USB mouse to work
> ("nommu_map_single overflow" messages), and it needs a firmware file
> rt3290.bin for the RT3290 WiFi chip to work (submitted bug 1133288).
>
> Then I try to boot into Windows. From GRUB, I get a screen "windows boot
> manager" with an error message "file \Boot\BCD - missing or contains
> errors".
>
>
> The boot sequence is a bit weird compared to what I'm used to - this is my
> first machine with UEFI. The BIOS has a UEFI boot order and a legacy boot
> order, which has to be enabled. UEFI takes precedence. With legacy
> enabled, F9 gives a boot menu with
> OS boot Manager
> Boot from EFI file
> Notebook hard drive
> Internal CD/DVD ROM Drive
> "Notebook hard drive" takes me to GRUB.
> "EFI file" takes me walkabout on a Windows file system with folders like
> "HP", "Boot", Windows" and what looks like hundreds of locale files -
> maybe I can boot in Turkish.
> "OS boot Manager" takes me to an HP/Windows system recovery screen with
> various options - continue, troubleshoot, turn off.
> "continue" goes to a splash screen like "attempting to repair" which
> fails. "troubleshoot" has a command prompt option. That's running Windows
> cmd.exe in one of the other partitions, mounted as X:
> In that, I find commands "chkdsk", "diskpart", "bootrec", "bcdedit" etc.
> To cut an even longer story short, I did something like:
> X:\ diskpart
> diskpart> select disk 0
> diskpart> select partition 4 (the NTFS system one)
> diskpart> set id=ebd0a0a2-b9e5-4433-87c0-68b6b72699c7
> X:\ bcdedit /set {default} device partition=C:
> X:\ bcdedit /set {default} osdevice partition=C:
> X:\ bootrec /rebuildbcd
>
> After doing that, the system partition appears as C:, passes chkdsk, and
> the system boots successfully into Windows.
>
> 3 questions:
> - what should I have done instead to create a dual-boot system on this
> hardware (the above is ridiculous and took hours of trials and research)
> - how can I make CentOS boot by default (since there is a valid EFI
> record for Windows 8, that seems to take preference unless I hit F9 at
> boot and manually select the disk)
> - is it possible to make CentOS boot via EFI rather than from the legacy
> partition boot record ?
> - how can I make Windows boot from GRUB ? (I tried
> "bcdedit /export C:\Boot\BCD", but that did not help - or I have the
> wrong file or syntax)
>
> Some documentation refers to a tool in Windows 8 called "EasyBCD", but I
> can't find it in my system.
>
>
>
> --
> Andrew Daviel, TRIUMF, Canada
> Tel. +1 (604) 222-7376 (Pacific Time)
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