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I am new to linux and bougth recently a MSI computer with a 1TB HDD + 128 GB SSD running FreeDos. I am trying to do a dual boot Win10 + ubuntu 16.04.1.

I started by installing Win10 on the 1 TB HDD. I found out after installing Win10 that it was installed in legacy mode despite the fact that my BIOS does have a UEFI mode. I used Rufus to create a live usb of Ubuntu 16.04.1 and tried to install it in legacy. (I had disabled fast startup fast boot and secure boot). My problem is that just after this screen

this screen,

Ubuntu never stops loading. As I heard it is possible to install Ubuntu in UEFI mode if it is not on the same disk as Win10, I tried to install it in UEFI (with and without fast boot and secure boot), but it is not working either. After grub if I choose "try without installing" or "install Ubuntu", Ubuntu never stops loading. I checked the integrity of my usb live thanks to grub and it looks fine.

I think the problem might be the partitions of my systementer image description here but I am not sure what to do next.I would like idealy to have Ubuntu on the SSD, with the ability to read and write on the Win10 NTFS partition on the hard drive. Should I create a new partition GPT or MRB with gparted ? If so, where should I create it ? I see a NTFS partition on my SSD (disk 1), does that mean that Win10 is installed on both the 1TB hard drive and SSD or can i just remove it ?

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  • Try verifying that Ubuntu image you downloaded is good by checking the MD5 value of the downloaded ISO, and before installing it there is an option to check the disk prior to installing. I'd look into those before going deeper. Nov 16, 2016 at 19:40
  • Thank you for your reply, i checked the MD5 value with WinMD5Free and the downloaded iso is good. I did check the disk before the instalation and it said it was fine. Nov 16, 2016 at 20:57
  • How you boot install media UEFI or BIOS is how it then installs. Windows only boots in UEFI mode from gpt and only in BIOS mode from MBR, so you cannot change the Windows install. Windows also puts a Boot partition on the drive that is default drive in BIOS/UEFI. So it may not be totally installed to one drive. Also Ubuntu in UEFI boot mode is installed to a gpt drive, but must have grub on the ESP - efi system partition on the drive seen as sda. Best then to either reinstall Windows in UEFI mode or install Ubuntu in BIOS mode.
    – oldfred
    Nov 16, 2016 at 21:06

1 Answer 1

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After the hashcheck of the ISO and media check, you still need to try booting the USB in a different machine, try different USB ports, and check your BIOS/UEFI settings for USB settings that might be available (e.g. legacy USB support might apply).

Once you fully confirm the USB is working and you still have the hanging problem, consider that having two disks might be causing problem. Usually the two disk problems are trying to boot off one which causes grub to simply freeze, so your USB boot does not fall into that category, but consider removing the HDD to try the install to the SDD. When the installer runs grub, it does put it on sda, but when booting, grub will happily run off the boot device (sdb in your case). You can manually copy in the bootloaders to the EFI paritition, but with a single disk for the install, things should just work out.

It is highly machine dependent how booting proceeds, I have a refurbished Lenovo which has Windows 10 and Ubuntu 16.04 in BIOS mode on the hard disk, and I installed 16.10 to an SDD in the disk caddy (in BIOS mode). But I did have an EFI partition (blank) set up on the SDD, and later copied in a backup of the Ubuntu EFI bootloaders, changing the /EFI/ubuntu/grub.cfg file's uuid to use the sdd's full copy of grub.cfg. On the Lenovo, that setup will boot in UEFI mode when booting the SDD directly (from the EFI menu), and boots in BIOS mode from the hard disk. The Lenovo allows the choice of "legacy first" or "UEFI first" in booting legacy first, the SDD had no legacy, so UEFI was (successfully) done. Other machines force a choice of either legacy or UEFI, so you may have to choose. Covering all bases and adding a 2M grub-bios flagged partition as well as having the EFI partition keeps your options open.

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