Background information: I've a Lenovo u510, which comes with pre-installed windows 8 with their "new" UEFI boot system as you know.
I need Ubuntu to run ROS for fun in my spare time and I need Windows for Autodesk Inventor and other programs for university studying.
I've tried 5 times now to be able to dual boot Windows with Ubuntu and it is driving me nuts.
First I installed Virtual box in Windows 8 to install Ubuntu this way. both operating systems work fine, but ROS will not work with the USB ports etc, so this option was useless. Then I tried to dual boot Ubuntu along windows 8, twice I almost messed up my computer, so I dropped this.
This was two month ago - this week I ended up with an extra SSD disk from my workstation, so I decided to install it in my laptop.
From what I could read and see on the internet this was the way to do it:
- First I wiped the SSD clean.
- Changed booting from UEFI to legacy mode
- Installed Windows 7
- Did a partition of 30 gb unallocated space.
- Then live-booted ubuntu with an usb-pen.
Then here comes the tricky part - either people get Ubuntu to ask if you like to install Ubuntu along windows 7/8/8.1 and then there wouldn't be any problem or ubuntu doesn't detect that there is already an operating system installed and then gives the other options of doing a clean install - removed all prior files. or "something else"
As other people have done on the internet I go with something else.
My partition can't be seen/doesn't work, so I create a new one, and a Swap and a root partition.
Then I install it Ubuntu, and when that is installed and running nicely. I can't boot windows 7, so I am pretty clear that Ubuntu just overwrote Windows 7 and installed itself.
I've tried this multiple times, with minor changes, the result is always that it can only find or boot up Ubuntu.
Is Windows still installed somewhere, do I somehow have the option to dual boot?
How can I get Ubuntu to detect Windows when I try to install Ubuntu along windows, so everything will work as planned?