I have a sony vaio duo 11 convertible, it was successfully dual booting lubuntu 13.10 and windows 8, but after the upgrade to windows 8.1 it doesn't load anything but windows.
I disabled windows' "quick boot" feature, then run boot-repair, but it doens't fix the issue (it used to work when windows 8 messed the boot config, but not with windows 8.1). I installed esayBCD on windows and now I see its boot loader, but not grub. I even tried chrooting and grub-installing on /dev/sda, but I don't think that grub is the boot loader loaded at startup.
My guess is that windows put a boot loader somewhere else than /dev/sda.
If I start the system with a refind USB disk I can successfully load lubuntu.
This is boot-repair output: http://paste.ubuntu.com/6598795/ (this one was run after booting sda2 lubuntu from a refind usb disk, but I also tried with live CDs with the same results)
A brief history of how I got there:
- In BIOS, I disabled "secure boot" and enabled "UEFI mode".
- Formatted the hard disk to wipe the sony pre-installed windows 8
- Installed Lubuntu 13.10 on sda2 (sda1 was created by the installer as UEFI partition)
- Installed Android-x86 on sda3 (everything was working so far)
- Installed Windows 8 in the free space (it created sda4-5-6). Windows screwed up the boot, but boot-repair fixed it. Windows kept overwriting the boot loader until I removed its "quick boot" option. (everything was working again)
- Upgraded windows to 8.1, now there is a windows boot loader, I removed (again) the "quick boot" option, I repeatedly installed grub on /dev/sda but I always get another bootloader (windows/microsoft/easyBCD??) that is only able to run windows.
I would like to understand which boot loader is run at startup, where it is located, and how I can change that. Thank you!
edit: I installed rEFInd in windows following the official instructions, and effectively changing the "windows boot manager" section so that now it looks as follows:
S:\EFI\refind>bcdedit /enum active /v
Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identificatore {9dea862c-5cdd-4e70-acc1-f32b344d4795}
device partition=S:
path \EFI\refind\refind_x64.efi
description rEFInd am
locale it-IT
inherit {7ea2e1ac-2e61-4728-aaa3-896d9d0a9f0e}
default {b781b519-6749-11e3-a4a1-eb3a69ac7fb1}
resumeobject {b781b518-6749-11e3-a4a1-eb3a69ac7fb1}
displayorder {b781b519-6749-11e3-a4a1-eb3a69ac7fb1}
{b781b512-6749-11e3-a4a1-eb3a69ac7fb1}
{b781b524-6749-11e3-a4a1-eb3a69ac7fb1}
toolsdisplayorder {b2721d73-1db4-4c62-bf78-c548a880142d}
timeout 5
displaybootmenu Yes
BUT I still get a boot loader that is not rEFInd!! it looks similar to this instead: windows legacy boot loader