Need Help dual booting win7 (on Win8 Laptop) and Linux

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

I’ve set up many OS’s on a single HDD in the past but have never run into this.

Summer of 2013 I bought a laptop, Toshiba Satellite L855-S5383, i5, 650GB HDD, 8GB Ram and did not care for win 8/8.1. I wiped the HDD, made the necessary changes to the BIOS settings and installed Win7 Ultimate w/ Windows CD and everything was fine (note everything here is 64 bit).

With the anticipation of Win 10 coming out, I quickly realized that I had best get Linux on this laptop as well (though I am going Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS, I like this community better, have had more success, and just overall get responses faster.

I shrunk the windows partition, reboot, than ran chkdsk, boot off the CD thinking I could use the ubuntu install wizard, and when it came to partitioning it said “…does not recognize current OS…” and showed my entire HDD as free space. I went back ang formatted the partition and tried it raw, I formatted NTFS, and the same result.

I threw in gparted and it also does not recognize anything anywhere on the HDD.

I also loaded into BIOS to see if I could adjust those settings again from when I ditched Win8, and they are no where to be found (UEFI I believe). I did this thinking that when I installed Win7, maybe there would be a booting issue, as I know the booting world changed w/ Windows with the release of Win 8 (again, UEFI I believe - still not very clear on it, guess Windblow$ wants to be even more anti-social). There was also an indicator in the ubuntu partition setup tool during installation that said the disk had GPD (or GTD) signatures were on the disk but something was deleted … I have no clue what this is, but have a hunch that this is an initial boot situation…meaning that my MBR is either trashed, or non-existent.

Right now my HDD has the 100MB Reserved partition, my Windows Parition, and 250-300GB partition set aside for unbuntu (and eventually openSuSE)

My goal is to have the reserved, win7, / (50GB) , 2-3GB Swap, /home (150GB)

Does it have to do with the MBR, or the absence of …?

However I end up fixing this, will I have to go through the same process again when I do put OpenSuSE on ?

Thanks in Advance !

#2

If you have a USB available:

Download the 13.2 live rescue CD. Maybe 13.1 would work for that, too.

Burn to the USB. Then startup Yast.

Install “gptfdisk-fixparts”. That should install to persistant space on the USB.

(You could probably burn to a CD instead. But the install of “gptfdisk-fixparts” will be temporary, and will disappear on reboot).

Then run the “fixparts” command against your disk.

Here’s the problem you are having:

Your computer came with UEFI and the Win 8 install used GPT partitioning on the disk.

You apparently switched to BIOS mode and legacy partitioning, to install Win7. But GPT partitioning is pernicious. Traces of the GPT partitioning table are still there, and “parted” and “gparted” do not like that.

The “fixparts” command can remove all remaining traces of GPT partitioning.

#3

Hi
Also note that Windows 10 adds an extra partition and I would guess probably you should look at switching to UEFI, it does make it much easier to install multiboot IMHO since not fighting with mbr locations…


NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 119.2G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0   300M  0 part [Window RE]
├─sda2   8:2    0   260M  0 part /boot/efi [Common EFI]
├─sda3   8:3    0   128M  0 part [Windows Reserved]
├─sda4   8:4    0    40G  0 part / [Tumbleweed]
├─sda5   8:5    0    30G  0 part /data
├─sda6   8:6    0     8G  0 part [SWAP]
└─sda7   8:7    0  40.6G  0 part [Windows 10 Preview]
#4

nrickert, Thanks that worked perfectly ! Much appreciation.

Malcomlewis, long time no see, been away for quite awhile. That was actually my followup question, should I consider making UEFI my norm … I’m guessing this was why I was having issues using the win 10 Demo cd they released last winter. My ultimate goal is to keep win 7 as long as humanly possible, or in other words, as long as Micro$oft will support it. From what I’ve seen, I feel like its going to be another Win8 only w/ a start button.

I already know that if I did the upgrade, I would have to go back and mess w/ grub to get my bootsplash back, but would it affect my linux Os’s seeing as how they would be looking for the MBR setup ?

Do you have any basic standard information or links that can tell me more about the UEFI setup and what its all about to assist me with this transition. Like I said I’ve been away from Linux for awhile and clearly need to catch up on this topic.

Thanks in advance

#5

On Wed 01 Jul 2015 03:06:01 PM CDT, subcook69420 wrote:

nrickert, Thanks that worked perfectly ! Much appreciation.

Malcomlewis, long time no see, been away for quite awhile. That was
actually my followup question, should I consider making UEFI my norm
… I’m guessing this was why I was having issues using the win 10
Demo cd they released last winter. My ultimate goal is to keep win 7 as
long as humanly possible, or in other words, as long as Micro$oft will
support it. From what I’ve seen, I feel like its going to be another
Win8 only w/ a start button.

I already know that if I did the upgrade, I would have to go back and
mess w/ grub to get my bootsplash back, but would it affect my linux
Os’s seeing as how they would be looking for the MBR setup ?

Do you have any basic standard information or links that can tell me
more about the UEFI setup and what its all about to assist me with this
transition. Like I said I’ve been away from Linux for awhile and
clearly need to catch up on this topic.

Thanks in advance

Hi
There is plenty of info here on the forum, not sure about having
windows 7 and 10, possibly multiple ESP’s (/boot/efi) partitions more
from the fact is they tend to use the same names eg Microsoft, opensuse
as naming conventions. I think nricket has done more with this. I’ve
used two separate drives in the past for windows 7 and 8

I have an ASUS system here I can test it on and try multibooting windows
7 and 10 along with openSUSE in non secure boot, since windows 7 can’t
do that.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel
3.12.43-52.6-default If you find this post helpful and are logged into
the web interface, please show your appreciation and click on the star
below… Thanks!

#6

UEFI is the direction for the future.

If your Windows 7 install media are UEFI compatible, then it might be better to reinstall that way. If they can only be used for MBR partitioning, then I guess wait till you are compelled to go UEFI for other reasons.

#7

I got my Windows 7 Ultimate install media within a year of windows 7 coming out (I have the actual CD’s)

Is there a way to tell if it’s UEFI compatible ?

If so, I’d rather not do a clean install of Win 7, but I feel like I should be follwoing the industry, especially if your saying that that is where it’s going … If it IS compatible, and I decided to do a clean install, would it affect my Kubuntu Backup ? would I have to start fresh from there as well ?

#8

You might do better asking on a Windows forum.

If you mount the initial CD as a data CD, is there a directory there named “EFI”? If there is, then that’s at least a hint at something.

#9

My understanding is that 7 is EFI compatible but does not support secure boot.

#10

Hi
Yes, but windows 8, 8.1 and 10 will boot in non-secure mode as well…

The biggest issue will be the additional partition (the RE one) created by windows 10. I also note that on just a windows 10 and openSUSE efi install there is no requirement to install one before the other, as long as the disk is pre-prepared (see my example above) with the partitioning your wanting.

#11

Yes, but I took the question to be whether the install CDs have EFI support.

As far as I know, there was already EFI support in Vista, perhaps only of a preliminary nature. I don’t know about installing.

When I priced computers in spring 2014, I noticed that Dell would still sell a Win7 machine. They were actually selling Win8, but with the option to downgrade to Win7. And they installed the downgrade. According to their site, Win7 would be installed in legacy boot mode with legacy disk partitioning. So there may have been limitations on the install media they were using for Win7.

#12

On Thu 02 Jul 2015 06:26:01 PM CDT, nrickert wrote:

gogalthorp;2717813 Wrote:
> My understanding is that 7 is EFI compatible but does not support
> secure boot.

Yes, but I took the question to be whether the install CDs have EFI
support.

As far as I know, there was already EFI support in Vista, perhaps only
of a preliminary nature. I don’t know about installing.

When I priced computers in spring 2014, I noticed that Dell would still
sell a Win7 machine. They were actually selling Win8, but with the
option to downgrade to Win7. And they installed the downgrade.
According to their site, Win7 would be installed in legacy boot mode
with legacy disk partitioning. So there may have been limitations on
the install media they were using for Win7.

Hi
The do… you can download iso images still, burn to usb and remove the
ei.cfg file and it’s an all in one install disk. I have them on 4GB USB
devices, one for mbr install and one for uefi install. Just need 8GB
devices for the windows 10 one, just like openSUSE and SLE 12…

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel
3.12.43-52.6-default If you find this post helpful and are logged into
the web interface, please show your appreciation and click on the star
below… Thanks!