Problem installing / booting Opensuse 13.2 dual boot with windows 8 on HP Pavilion 15

English Install/Boot/Login
#1

I am having severe problems installing Opensuse 13.2 on an Hp Pavilion 15, model number HP 15 - e078ea. I have tried three times and failed to install it, both times with me having to revert back to a cloned drive.

What I am aiming for is to be able to dual boot Opensuse 13.2 and windows. The former to run some opensource engineering programs like OpenFoam, salome and code aster and then windows for a few games and general use. CAELinux isn’t an option as the install version of openfoam is too old and I need to use a function only available on OF2.3 (Or 2.4.x).

The first time I enabled legacy support to be able to boot the CD as recommended by HP… Total disaster as Opensuse failed to install after I tried to install it under eifi but I guess it installed under legacy. Either way the installation failed and left me with the message on turning my laptop of “Selected boot image did not authenticate press <Enter> to continue”. The laptop would not boot from CD, any other media or the BIOS. Back to the clone drive…

Attempt two, disabled secure boot, booted Opensuse CD by restarting Windows 8 by going into the charm menu, settings, pc settings, update and recovery, recovery advanced restart. This is the only way I have found of getting the Opensuse live CD to boot in EIFI mode. Everything appeared to install fine this time, but still “Selected boot image did not authenticate press <Enter> to continue”, I could however still load the Opensuse CD but not the BIOS.

This time in more detail, here are the steps I took on the last attempt:

  1. Clone my old hard drive to my new SSD drive, this leave my old hard drive acting as a backup.

  2. Shrink windows partition on new hard drive to leave free space on hard drive. (I have to disable hibernate, debug memory dump, the pagefile and system restore to do so.

  3. Having shrunk the partition the windows recovery partition of my laptop is now useless.

  4. Turn off and on again. Boot into Windows 8

  5. Restart Windows 8 by going into the charm menu, settings, pc settings, update and recovery, recovery advanced restart. This is the only way I have found of getting the Opensuse live CD to boot in secure EIFI mode.

The Opensuse DVD image I am using is at the top of this page, 64bit PC:

https://software.opensuse.org/132/en

  1. Follow through the install, partitions are setup according to:

https://tweakhound.com/2014/11/13/dual-boot-opensuse-13-2-and-windows-8-1-uefi/

I create an ext4 partition for the OS.

  1. Everything installs fine, it says to restart so I do so.

  2. Here is where the problem might be, instead of booting into a bootloader, the installation CD loads again.

  3. Abort new installation, obviously it says installation failed.

  4. Now when I start the laptop it says “Selected boot image did not authenticate press <Enter> to continue”. Upon pressing enter the laptop shuts down.

  5. Or I can keep the Opensuse CD in and it will boot to the install disk. At this point I can check the partitions. The installation partitions are there, but the OS partition is NOT ext4, instead it is BTRFS for \home and something I have forgotten for root (or the other way round, I forgot to write it down in my frustration). I’d rather it didn’t do this after I selected to create an ext4 partition.

Does anyone have any idea what is happening? Or how I can go about fixing it? At the moment I am having to waste a lot of time trying to set things up for each install only for it to fail every time.

Thanks for any help.

#2

Generally you should be able to boot in EFI mode by selecting from the EFI boot menu this is often but not always F12 at boot. Consulter your hardware docs. You should not need to boot to Windows to boot other things. If you do then this machine is broken by design.

Note that all the installs today require a DVD not a CD. A CD does not have enough room so you may well be missing parts. You should also remove the DVD/CD from the machine at the reboot as per instructions.

#3

On Thu 04 Jun 2015 12:26:02 PM CDT, gogalthorp wrote:

Generally you should be able to boot in EFI mode by selecting from the
EFI boot menu this is often but not always F12 at boot. Consulter your
hardware docs. You should not need to boot to Windows to boot other
things. If you do then this machine is broken by design.

Note that all the installs today require a DVD not a CD. A CD does not
have enough room so you may well be missing parts. You should also
remove the DVD/CD from the machine at the reboot as per instructions.

Hi
HP’s are generally F9 for boot menu, F10 for BIOS…

Here you can select a boot option, some HP’s now have a custom boot
option where you can point it to the efi file.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel 3.12.39-47-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!

#4

Sorry I meant to say DVD (it definitely is a DVD-R), a confusion as I only usually use the DVD drive for copying lossless music CDs to my laptop.

I think the machine is broken by design, or more likely user error has caused things to go awry. In EIFI boot all I can boot to are the recover disk partition or windows and not anything else. Even if I switch the boot order to boot from DVD drive (or USB) first. To boot from USB or CD I have to either do as I described above by going through windows or their has to be no bootable OS.

I attempted this and successfully got to the boot menu, but then couldn’t find the efi file, I just kept going through endless folders with names like AA, AZ etc, I got three folders deep in a few of the folders and stopped looking. I am going to research where it should be for tomorrow.

On the plus side I also got to the BIOS. I am creating a fresh image of my hard drive overnight then try again tomorrow morning when I am a little more alert. I might also try turning secure boot off when I get the issue tomorrow and see if the grub bootloader will load. At least then I’ll know a bit more about the problem.

Failing that (and a few more goes at trying things out) I will try a different distro install and see if that works as I really need it working for a meeting next week.

Thanks for the help so far and I’ll let you know how it goes.

#5

Not sure if its related, but I failed three times to install 13.2 besides windows 7.

So every time I went back to installing opensuse 13.1.

Been using (open)suse since release 9.
But this 13.2 install menu is giving me an headache.

First attempt failed, when the only thing I changed was, ext 4 instead of brtfs.

I might give it another try someday, but I suspect I have to change the disk order in the install menu.

Everytime the install seems to go alright until the installer tells me its gonna reboot.
next thing I see is an grub error, it can find the mbr.

I am lost on wht they changed, but a friend of mine who is using linux for years too, (mint at the moment) had issues with that installer menu too.

This is not meant to criticize opensuse, but more about feedback.
That installer is confusing to say the least.

#6

**Stevx

by chance did you NOT repartition or shrink windows partitions

you can not install a second operation system IF there are NO free drive partitions to install it to

Microsoft REQUIRES!!! being on the FIRST disk with the windows bootloader on the MBR of the first frive

so that is 2 of the 4 partitions

install opensuse to the resized space

make partition3 a “extended”
**
then install suse on that

WTF ??? why is this BOLD !!!

i did NOT ADD any b ] / b ] tags as i typed

#7

On Thu 04 Jun 2015 08:36:02 PM CDT, Sevex wrote:

gogalthorp;2713569 Wrote:
> Generally you should be able to boot in EFI mode by selecting from the
> EFI boot menu this is often but not always F12 at boot. Consulter your
> hardware docs. You should not need to boot to Windows to boot other
> things. If you do then this machine is broken by design.
>
> Note that all the installs today require a DVD not a CD. A CD does not
> have enough room so you may well be missing parts. You should also
> remove the DVD/CD from the machine at the reboot as per instructions.

Sorry I meant to say DVD (it definitely is a DVD-R), a confusion as I
only usually use the DVD drive for copying lossless music CDs to my
laptop.

I think the machine is broken by design, or more likely user error has
caused things to go awry. In EIFI boot all I can boot to are the recover
disk partition or windows and not anything else. Even if I switch the
boot order to boot from DVD drive (or USB) first. To boot from USB or
CD I have to either do as I described above by going through windows or
their has to be no bootable OS.

malcolmlewis;2713574 Wrote:
> Hi
> HP’s are generally F9 for boot menu, F10 for BIOS…
>
> Here you can select a boot option, some HP’s now have a custom boot
> option where you can point it to the efi file.

I attempted this and successfully got to the boot menu, but then
couldn’t find the efi file, I just kept going through endless folders
with names like AA, AZ etc, I got three folders deep in a few of the
folders and stopped looking. I am going to research where it should be
for tomorrow.

On the plus side I also got to the BIOS. I am creating a fresh image of
my hard drive overnight then try again tomorrow morning when I am a
little more alert. I might also try turning secure boot off when I get
the issue tomorrow and see if the grub bootloader will load. At least
then I’ll know a bit more about the problem.

Failing that (and a few more goes at trying things out) I will try a
different distro install and see if that works as I really need it
working for a meeting next week.

Thanks for the help so far and I’ll let you know how it goes.

Hi
For openSUSE it’s /EFI/opensuse/shim.efi for windows
it’s /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi. Did the openSUSE directory exist?

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel 3.12.39-47-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!

#8

On Thu 04 Jun 2015 09:46:01 PM CDT, JohnVV wrote:

*Stevx

by chance did you NOT repartition or shrink windows partitions

you can not install a second operation system IF there are NO free drive
partitions to install it to

Microsoft REQUIRES!!! being on the FIRST disk with the windows
bootloader on the MBR of the first frive

so that is 2 of the 4 partitions

install opensuse to the resized space

make partition3 a “extended”
*
then install suse on that

WTF ??? why is this BOLD !!!

i did NOT ADD any b ] / b ] tags as i typed

Hi
The OP is using UEFI, disk will be gpt so no need for extended
partition or mbr…

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel 3.12.39-47-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!

#9

It can be done but you are probably wasting your time. You need to use the windows boot manager to start linux. HP uses a proprietary UEFI and the boot manager files get overwritten on each boot such that only windows is available. Easier to install virtual box and run openSUSE as a virtual machine from within windows.

#10

Sounds like you have more than 1 HDD. That may have been an issue during your installation. You did start a thread https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/505199-Probleem-met-installeren-13-2 but that one is in dutch. I can’t read it. Just changing from BTRFS to EXT4 shouldn’t give rise to a problem, on the other hand. You could try to post again in english here in this forum?

#11

Hi
I have HP systems here, latest ones allow a ‘custom’ efi boot where you can enter the efi file your wanting to boot first… many other manufactures UEFI implementations always want to boot windows first.

#12

Firstly I changed a few settings from the previous attempted install. I swapped the boot order in the BIOS to allow everything apart from network to boot before the OS, this has allowed me to boot from the DVD drive and USB. I can only guess the DVD drive is registering as something else in the BIOS (perhaps the external drive?). I can now boot without going to windows.

Thanks for that, it has allowed me to boot into OpenSUSE and everything works, so that installed properly at least. I can access my data partition as well as having access to the windows partition, (broken) recovery partition and everything else on the hard drive.

The problem being is the windows bootloader is broken, whenever I click it the following error appears:
The application or operating system couldn’t be loaded because a required file is missing or contains errors.

\windows\system32\winload.efi

I have attempted to repair it with the Windows installation disc I made, but it hangs on attempting repair. Other websites have mentioned using a program EasyRE but that costs money that I shouldn’t need to spend and I reckon it won’t work either. My next goal is to try and use the bootrec commands but I thought I’d inform everyone what is happening first in case that breaks openSUSE and I have to do an image restore again.

Thanks, I know about that issue, I will just have to press F9 to boot into OpenSUSE, annoying but a simple enough workaround. A VM is very inefficient for what I want to do, I had considered it. Or as Malcolm mentioned I could use a custom eifi.

So the problem seems to be that the OpenSUSE install is damaging the windows efi boot file, preventing it from working. I will let you know if using the bootrec commands fixes anything.

#13

On Fri 05 Jun 2015 11:56:02 AM CDT, Sevex wrote:

So the problem seems to be that the OpenSUSE install is damaging the
windows efi boot file, preventing it from working. I will let you know
if using the bootrec commands fixes anything.

Hi
Check the BIOS to ensure fast booting is off, in windows (when you get
it loaded) ensure that you set the system to do a full shutdown (eg
shutdown /s /t 5) you can set this in the system power options, else
create a shortcut on the desktop for the above command.

–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° LFCS, SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 12 GNOME 3.10.1 Kernel 3.12.39-47-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!

#14

The issue is with UEFI. You could also revert to legacy BIOS re-install Windows and then install Linux as dual boot as normal. Depends how badly you want secure/fast boot available in Windows.

#15

https://tweakhound.com/2014/11/13/dual-boot-opensuse-13-2-and-windows-8-1-uefi/

#16

Update, I have been unable to get OpenSUSE to work for whatever reason and due to time constraints will have to leave it for now, I have managed to get Ubuntu 14.04 LTS working. I include the information below just in case it helps anyone someday.

Also I had everything setup as various websites, help from this forum and my own knowledge told me to, like disabling hibernate, fastboot etc but it still failed to work.

What I think was happening was the installation package was creating an additional boot partition (or altering the existing one) as when in diskpart (on the windows installation disk) only it, another boot partition, the WindowsRE partition and the linux swap partition were visible. Total size of all partitions 3.5GB. The rest of the 1TB hard drive wasn’t visible at all. This also made all of the windows installation bootloader repair tools fail as it couldn’t find any partition with windows in.

Oddly despite this I could still boot into OpenSUSE for a while, about 1/2 hour. It could see all the partitions but during that half hour gradually everything began failing, first Dolphin, then the terminal and finally Firefox. Nothing would open after this, yet I could still shut down. I did a full shutdown but from that point on OpenSUSE would hang when trying to load. After this point I tried to format the hard drive and write my hard drive image over it (using AOMEI backupper). Even this failed this time, saying the hard drive was in use by another program.

To solve this I decided to fresh install windows hoping it would free up the hard drive. At first none of the hard drive would appear. However upon deleting the 700MB additional boot partition the rest of the hard drive reappeared. So I decided to see if windows boot tools would now work but even after reassigning the original drive letters to everything it still failed. So I used the windows installation disk to delete everything on the disk then used AOMEI to transfer my hard drive image. Even that messed up as it changed drive letters from the originals (it never has before), but renaming them under diskpart then running chkdsk and chkdsk /f repaired everything.

On the plus side:

I managed to get Ubuntu 14.04 LTS installed this evening, although even that required me messing around with the UEFI boot partition by giving it a drive name using diskpart, then running chkdsk on it, then chkdsk /f. This deleted the ubuntu .efi file, which for some reason didn’t install properly (the ubuntu EFI folder wasn’t recognised by Windows or Ubuntu). Then running boot repair under Linux and then using bcdedit in windows to use the shimx64 efi file rather than the windows one by default. This finally allowed me to dual boot a Linux OS! Just a shame it wasn’t OpenSUSE again…

Thank you once again for your help, I wouldn’t have been able to install any Linux OS without your help. Maybe once I am less busy (or get a different laptop…) I can reinstall OpenSUSE :slight_smile:

#17

Well Seems like some HP EFI are totally non standard. You should be OK with two EFI boot partitions (FAT format) Though it is probably better to use just one. Each and every bootable OS will have an entry in the EFI boot partition. This is need for the EFI boot. If for some reason the installer gets confused you can direct it to the right way via the expert mode. You would want to either create a EFI boot partition (FAT) if no other OS is on the drive or use the existing one. In either case the it should be mounted as /boot/efi. You should never ever mix legacy mode and EFI mode booting. In theory it can be done on some hardware but it really will cause continuing pain.

It appears that this hardware is broken by design so if me I’d write a strong letter to HP. If no one complains they will continue to ride roughshod over us.I’d propbably return the hardware as not supporting a standard UEFI.

#18

I had told the installer to use the existing EFI boot partition, but something stopped it from installing on there, as witnessed by my Ubuntu installation problem. It seems as though the HP EFI boot prevents or corrupts any attempted EFI boot partition modification by anything other than HP “allowed” software.

Edit: Returning the laptop isn’t possible, I purchased it nearly two years ago when I had no idea I would need a Linux partition on it. At the time I was working on a cluster with remote login via Windows. So a letter it is.

I will be writing to HP as it does appear the the UEFI standard is definitely not being followed, but it might take a few weeks for me to be able to do so, I’ll let everyone know here if I get a response.

#19

Hi
On all my HP UEFI systems I’ve never seen this issue, more likely a FAT16 vs FAT32 issue of the EFI partition.

I have dual booting HP’s (ProBook 4525s, 4330s, 4440s, 455 G1 and a HP 2000 notebook) windows 7, windows 8 and windows 10. But if I can I always prep the disk first, with the windows 8 notebook I had to shrink things first as no install DVD (only recovery DVD which wipes the drive) to add in partitions.

I also have a HP Pavillion 10 here, but have only single booted openSUSE, probably need to give dual boot a whirl…

#20

I’ve already written to HP in this connection. Despite being an HP customer for the best part of 35 years they didn’t even have the courtesy to respond. As soon as the warranty on my HP expires then Win 8.1 will be nuked. I look forward to developing new relationships with other manufactures in the future.