There are several possible solutions to the Windows boot bug. Three of these are:
- Use Ubuntu's Boot Repair tool. You'll probably have to run this from a live CD (like your installer).
- Install my rEFInd boot manager. Do this from Windows and install the driver for the filesystem on which your Linux kernel resides (probably ext4fs) for best results. There's a slim chance that booting Ubuntu directly from rEFInd will fix your video problems, too, but that's not likely.
- Edit the
/etc/grub.d/40_custom file in Ubuntu and add an entry for Windows. Once this is done, type sudo update-grub to fix the GRUB configuration. You'll obviously need to do this from a text-mode boot or from a live CD unless you can fix your Ubuntu video problems first.
Something like the following will probably work for the final option, although you'll need to fiddle with the details, and particularly the (hd0,gpt1) bit:
menuentry "Windows 8" {
insmod part_gpt
insmod chain
set root='(hd0,gpt1)'
chainloader /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
}
As to the Ubuntu video problem, there seem to be a lot of issues like yours of late, probably because of Linux video driver issues. Sometimes adding a hardware-specific kernel option will help, as oldfred has suggested; but I don't know the details of what's necessary on specific systems, and you haven't said what your video hardware is. As a generic fallback suggestion, the following might help (but don't get your hopes up too high):
- Add
single to the boot options.
- You'll get to a prompt that asks for a root password or to press Ctrl+D. Press Ctrl+D.
- The system will give you a login prompt. Log in with your regular username.
- Type
sudo su to acquire root privileges.
- Type
cp /root/xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf
- Reboot, and this time use the regular boot options.
This might not work right away, and in fact it's conceivable that it will make matters worse. If so, you can use a live CD to delete the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. If this procedure doesn't help, or if it helps a bit but not enough to make you happy, you might be able to get it working by editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Unfortunately, editing this file is a complex topic. Googling "editing xorg.conf" returns lots of hits, but I have no specific recommendations for what site to read. If you take some time to learn, it's conceivable that you'll get it working. Broadly speaking, you probably want to eliminate all but the first Screen definition from the ServerLayout section, and play with which specific definition it uses (Screen0, Screen1, etc.). If you make progress but can't quite get it perfect, try posting another question or (better) post on a Web forum or on IRC. (This site isn't really ideal for interactive debugging.)
