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Monday, August 19, 2013

My Windows 8 & Ubuntu dual boot Experience in UEFI BIOS

I got a new laptop few weeks back with Windows 8. Model is Dell Latitude 3330 - it is light weight has i5 processor, 8G RAM, 500G Hybrid SSD & 13.3" HD screen and HD cam - no optical drive. Performance of the laptop was superb when i first booted it. I am planning to install some apps mainly outlook 2013 (office 365 version) and some browsers like firefox, Chrome etc. My usage is very light - i use very minimal apps so i won't be installing too many apps - all i need is to check office mails and browse. I want to install Ubuntu as dual boot so have to change the partition schema.

Before installing Ubuntu i logged into Windows 8 and shrinked the main partition C: to 100G. This left me with 350+G for rest of the data. Then i booted from an external DVD drive with Ubuntu 13.04 (64Bit) and installed it. Left enough space for Ubuntu home & data partitions and also created couple of partitions for storing data - I partition drives in this way so that each partition can be handled separately. I wanted one partition to be "common" between both Windows & Ubuntu so that i can access data from both OSes when required. I also left the other partitions in the system (FACTORY reset, TOOLS) untouched.

After installing Ubuntu i rebooted the machine expecting to see an option menu but the system booted into Ubuntu directly. Boot loader menu was not displayed at all. Rebooted again and pressed F12 to BIOS boot menu. There, in the UEFI boot menu, i could see Windows and Ubuntu. I could boot into Windows and work. Then rebooted again to Linux and copied all my data to data partitions. After copying data i had 3 data partitions, 2 recovery & tools partitions & 3 Linux partitions.

Now trying to find a way to boot into Linux & Windows without hitting F12 every time I wanted a solution. Thought of trying a bootloader in Windows 8 and found this. So installed EasyBCD 2.2 in Windows 8, edited the boot options. It detected the OS automatically i had to change the option to Ubuntu though. Clicked on Write MBR. It reported success so rebooted the PC.

Shock! I had two options there. Windows 8 & Windows 8. Strange! Further none of the options took me to Windows 8. So i have completely lost the ability to boot into Windows 8. Thankfully i could hit F12 and boot into Ubuntu. All my data in other partitions were there. Started searching for solutions to recover

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