Dual boot using Windows boot manager does not work

Question

I am very new to Ubuntu and want to install it on a new partition besides Windows. I've followed the steps in this tutorial: http://www.linuxbsdos.com/2014/02/01/dual-boot-windows-8-or-windows-7-and-ubuntu-13-10-with-ubuntu-on-a-btrfs-filesystem/

And the installation itself worked like a charm. These were the steps I did:

1. Shrink partition size in Windows
2. Install ubuntu. As in the tutorial described I created three partitions:
   • Boot partition, logical, with 150 MB, EXT4 and mount point /boot
   • Swap partition, logical, with 2 GB
   • Main partition, logical, with 10 GB, btrfs and mount point /
3. The installation completed successfully (including GRUB2)
4. Now I booted back to Windows and installed EasyBCD
5. There I've added a new entry to Boot menu pointing to the 150 MB boot partition. The tool also recognizes this partition as "Linux".
6. When rebooting, the Windows Boot Manager appears and shows me the new Ubuntu entry as possible option

But when I select Ubuntu, GRUB is not showing up. Instead I see a crypted error message (see Update 3 below), which disappears quickly... I have no clue what I did wrong. Hope you can help.

I will append the actual error messages, when I have access to the PC again.

Thanks in advance!

Update:

This is what the harddisk looked like, before I applied the new partitions. I could use sdb1 as target for GRUB, but this would overwrite the Windows Boot Manager, correct? In case of an error I would not be able to boot Windows anymore, so I like to avoid this and use the Boot Manager of Windows instead.

Update 2: I tried boot-repair, but it does not work. I get this alert box at startup which says "/boot found.":

Update 3: These are the error messages, when Windows Boot Manager tries to boot from partition, which contains GRUB:

Try (hd0,0): NTFS5: No ang0 Try (hd0,1): NTFS5:

This disappears quickly and then: Initialize variable space... Starting cmain() ...

From now on, nothing will happen. At this point I expected GRUB2 to show up.

Answer 1

You can safely replace the Windows loader with GRUB. GRUB can manage both Windows and Ubuntu for you. This is simple, straight forward and error free way of dual booting in my experience. GRUB rocks!

I mentioned simple, and I mean it. All you have to do is insert your ubuntu Installation media, reboot, choose Try Ubuntu without Installing.

Now in the live mode, execute these commands, after connecting to internet:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair && boot-repair

Just choose Recommended Repair and follow the instructions. The end result will be that GRUB will be your Boot Manager, and with it you will be able to boot into both windows and any other linux distros you may install including Ubuntu.

Good Luck!

Source and reference: Boot Repair: Ubuntu Docs