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I have a laptop with UEFI (secure boot disabled) with Windows 8.

I am trying to install Ubuntu 12.10 or 12.04 along side Windows 8 on my primary hard drive, which uses GPT. I am only presented with the option to erase the disk and install so the install alongside windows option does not appear.

How can I install Ubuntu without erase my Windows system?

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  • I presume that you are booting from the Ubuntu LiveCD trying to install Ubuntu. From what site do you downloaded the ISO? Are you trying with a single CD or did you tried burning more CDs?
    – Lucio
    Jan 13, 2013 at 23:26
  • I am booting from a USB drive. I downloaded the ISO images from Ubuntu.com. I have tried multiple USB drives, and several different ISO images.
    – NGWMark
    Jan 14, 2013 at 0:42
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    Please boot the Ubuntu disc into its "live CD" mode and then run the Boot Info Script (sourceforge.net/projects/bootinfoscript). This will produce a file called RESULTS.txt. Post a link to it. This will give us a better idea of what sort of partitions and other relevant configuration your system has.
    – Rod Smith
    Jan 15, 2013 at 17:08

4 Answers 4

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It is possible that the Ubuntu installer is not recognizing Windows 8 because of GPT partitions. Below are some links that helped me.

Links:

Why is Windows 8 invisible on Ubuntu 12.10's installer?

Zapping GPT Data Structures

Note: The second link asks for gdisk. I was unable to download gdisk via terminal. I had to go through firefox and get the .deb file, which took me to ubuntu's software center. Here is the link to get the .deb file: GPT fdisk gdisk

Hope this helps!

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In your case, the only way to avoid erasing Windows is to choose Something Else at the Installation type step of the Ubuntu install.

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Well, this happened to me too. You don't really need the ubuntu installer to recognize the windows in order to dual boot.

What I did was to wipe off the windows efi partition (system reseved files) that was somehow formatted in ntfs and format it with FAT and install ubuntu on a separate partition using this new FAT efi partition.

Then load the windows recovery cd, and manually add on the efi partition, by using the command prompt, the windows boot files. Here is a guide on how to do that: https://superuser.com/a/504360

Procedure pretty much amounts to pointing where your windows partition is, mounting the EFI partition, and running bcdboot to create the bcd boon on EFI in microsoft's folder.

Then to make sure when you reboot into ubuntu to install boot-repair it will fix most GRUB and boot errors.

...or try to play around with GPT partitioning like the other answer indicated. It's fairly tedious IMO, but hey, this is Linux. :)

Best of luck!

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I agree with: The something else option That way you can configure the install exactly as required.

Make sure you backup. Remember too that by default Windows 8 doesn't actually shutdown properly, you need to change some settings to make sure it does. This is an important part of any setting up a dual boot.

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