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I'm trying to get a functional dual-boot of Ubuntu 14.04 and Windows 7 Home Premium. I began with a working Windows 7, then created a partition for Ubuntu. I thought I succeeded in installing Ubuntu on that partition, but it appeared corrupted, so I reinstalled from the CD, choosing "Erase Ubuntu 14.04 LTS and reinstall". At that time, my entire disk was formatted and all 500GB of my HDD were given to the Ubuntu partition, my Windows 7 partition was entirely erased.

At that point, I created a new partition for Windows using gparted and installed Windows 7 successfully in that partition. As expected, this erased the Ubuntu grub bootloader, and my laptop now boots exclusively into Windows. I've tried a number of solutions from the Live CD, including Boot Repair and attempting to run install-grub and update-grub.

The Boot Repair paste is here: http://paste.ubuntu.com/7476445 . I don't know where to go from here; I feel like I've exhausted all of my options, and at this point what seemed to be a simple endeavor to dual-boot ended up with me over my head.

If anyone could help or point me in the right direction, I would really appreciate it. Thank you!

3 Answers 3

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This should answer your question sounds a lot like this Dual boot UEFI Windows 7 and Ubuntu 12.04 (both 64 bits). W7 entry doesn't appear in GRUB

Could be wrong, but that may solve your trouble.

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  • Hi Virusboy, thanks for helping out! I'm not sure that post helps in this case, since I can't get grub to show at all. It seems like the problem in that thread is that grub displays, but ignores Windows. In my case, rebooting the PC just jumps straight to booting Windows without showing grub at all.
    – user282418
    May 17, 2014 at 5:08
  • Try using boot repair on your 14.04 live cd
    – Virusboy
    May 17, 2014 at 5:15
  • I did, but it didn't work. The output from that run of boot-repair is here: paste.ubuntu.com/7476445 It says an error occurred, and then the next time I reboot, it brings up the Windows Recovery page, where the options are to "fix the startup" or "start windows normally". No grub, even after using boot-repair.
    – user282418
    May 17, 2014 at 5:26
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  1. If possible, set up your BIOS (UEFI firmware) boot order so that it boots the Ubuntu entry by default
  2. Else, run Boot-Repair --> Advanced Options --> Backup and rename Windows EFI files --> Apply.
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  • Hi @LovinBuntu, my BIOS only allows me to choose between optical disk drive and HDD at startup, so that's no good. I did try running boot-repair with your suggestion, but no luck. The only difference is that my computer now boots into Windows without first showing the Windows Recovery Screen, but still no sign of GRUB. Any further ideas? The boot-repair output is here: paste.ubuntu.com/7479750
    – user282418
    May 17, 2014 at 18:57
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Problem solved! I'm not sure what actually did it, so I'll post all steps.

1) Reinstall Ubuntu, making sure to designate that the bootloader should be installed on the EFI partition. For me, this was /dev/sda1. Previously, I had installed the bootloader on the same partition as Ubuntu (sda2).

2) Follow this tutorial. Seems to be Sony Vaio specific, which is what I have. Turns out Sony sometimes uses a weird custom BIOS that doesn't play nice with standard dual-boot procedure.

http://www.hackourlife.com/sony-vaio-with-insyde-h2o-efi-bios-ubuntu-12-04-dual-boot/

3) update-grub and reboot

4) Viola! Grub now shows Ubuntu and Windows at start menu and I can boot into either at startup.

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