posting this question after three days searching online and trying various things.
I have two physical drives (each a 480GB SSD), one with Ubuntu 14.04, one with WIN7. I would like to get a choice to boot into one of the OS via either GRUB2 or EasyBCD - no preference. I have not had much success configuring either. Pressing the power button gets me into Ubuntu with no further attention required, pressing DEL at startup allows me to enter the UEFI BIOS and boot the WIN7 disk (SATA in IDE mode). The ONLY time I get the Windows Boot Manager screen is after I go into the BIOS and select the WIN7 drive to boot - not much point to that. I have not seen the grub screen ever.
Here's my fdisk -l
output (see also the tabulated representation from GParted further down):
Disk /dev/sda: 480.1 GB, 480103981056 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 58369 cylinders, total 937703088 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00000000
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 937703087 468851543+ ee GPT
Disk /dev/sdb: 480.1 GB, 480103981056 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 58369 cylinders, total 937703088 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x05eaa1a0
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 2048 206847 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdb2 206848 937699327 468746240 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
Here's some things I have tried and encountered:
In EasyBCD, I added Ubuntu and Neogrub as New Entries. Entry #2 Ubuntu I put as Device: boot rather than C:. The Neogrub (#Entry #3) configuration file menu.lst looked like this:
default 1
timeout 30
title Ubuntu
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-48-generic ro root= /dev/sda2
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-48-generic
title Windows 7
root (hd1,0)
makeactive
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1
boot
The initrd.img-3.13.0-48-generic seemed to be an archive (message: cannot open with Archive Manager). I pressed BCD Deployment and Write MBR under MBR Configuration Options for the "Install Windows7 bootloader to the MBR" radiobutton. Here is my final EasyBCD summary:
There are a total of 3 entries listed in the bootloader.
Default: Windows 7
Timeout: 30 seconds
EasyBCD Boot Device: C:\
Entry #1
Name: Windows 7
BCD ID: {current}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \Windows\system32\winload.exe
Entry #2
Name: Ubuntu
BCD ID: {2ea417e1-d5e2-11e4-b820-a9e2042696c7}
Device: boot
Bootloader Path: \NST\AutoNeoGrub0.mbr
Entry #3
Name: NeoGrub Bootloader
BCD ID: {2ea417e2-d5e2-11e4-b820-a9e2042696c7}
Drive: C:\
Bootloader Path: \NST\NeoGrub.mbr
I installed grub2 following this tutorial, but did not seem to work it out. I did update grub2.
I also tried an automatic fix via boot-repair, but got messages asking me to create a BIOS-Boot partition (think I already have this? -see the output from GParted below), and "disable Secure Boot in BIOS" (could not see anything like that in my BIOS):
Partition File system Mount Point Size Flags
/dev/sda1 FAT32 /boot/efi) 512 MB Boot
/dev/sda2 ext4 / 414 GB
/dev/sda3 linux-swap 32 GB
I guess those are the main things. After 3 days of installing Ubuntu, reinstalling Windows and troubleshooting various things, I feel pretty stuck and directionless. Thanks in advance for any tips.