Wow. (Sent from iPhone, so please accept my apologies in advance for any spelling or grammatical errors.) > On Aug 25, 2014, at 7:57 PM, Andrew Daviel <advax at triumf.ca> wrote: > > (apologies for the length - there are questions at the end...) > > I've been running Linux for 20 years, and done a lot of dual-boots. I know > that's old-school now, but I run Linux 95% of the time yet don't want to > lose a Windows system I've paid for - but I've never tried removing it > from a system and reinstalling the same licenced copy inside a virtual machine. > > I bought a new laptop back in April this year, after trying to check > online for Linux certification to match what was in the local stores. > There's so many models and variants that's almost impossible, but I found > various "HP Pavilion 14" in www.ubuntu.com/certification > and a couple of "HP EliteBook" in hardware.redhat.com/laptop. > So I bought an "HP Pavilion 14-n228ca TouchSmart Notebook", > which came with Windows 8.1 installed. > > So I start off doing what I've done on previous occasions - get into the > BIOS, change the boot order, boot a CentOS 6 installation CD as used on > my desktop, go into rescue mode and look at the partitions. Normally I'd > use fdisk, but that says it doesn't understand GPT and I should use > parted. There's 5 partitions, so I use resizefs to shrink the main NTFS > data partition, then delete the partition and recreate it shorter at the > same start location. Then reboot the CD into install mode, create a > Linux partition in the free space, and install CentOS, which adds a > choice of "Other" in grub.conf to boot Windows. > > Then I boot CentOS and finish the install - a couple of glitches; it needs > a kernel parameter "iommu=soft" to get the USB mouse to work > ("nommu_map_single overflow" messages), and it needs a firmware file > rt3290.bin for the RT3290 WiFi chip to work (submitted bug 1133288). > > Then I try to boot into Windows. From GRUB, I get a screen "windows boot > manager" with an error message "file \Boot\BCD - missing or contains > errors". > > > The boot sequence is a bit weird compared to what I'm used to - this is my > first machine with UEFI. The BIOS has a UEFI boot order and a legacy boot > order, which has to be enabled. UEFI takes precedence. With legacy > enabled, F9 gives a boot menu with > OS boot Manager > Boot from EFI file > Notebook hard drive > Internal CD/DVD ROM Drive > "Notebook hard drive" takes me to GRUB. > "EFI file" takes me walkabout on a Windows file system with folders like > "HP", "Boot", Windows" and what looks like hundreds of locale files - > maybe I can boot in Turkish. > "OS boot Manager" takes me to an HP/Windows system recovery screen with > various options - continue, troubleshoot, turn off. > "continue" goes to a splash screen like "attempting to repair" which > fails. "troubleshoot" has a command prompt option. That's running Windows > cmd.exe in one of the other partitions, mounted as X: > In that, I find commands "chkdsk", "diskpart", "bootrec", "bcdedit" etc. > To cut an even longer story short, I did something like: > X:\ diskpart > diskpart> select disk 0 > diskpart> select partition 4 (the NTFS system one) > diskpart> set id=ebd0a0a2-b9e5-4433-87c0-68b6b72699c7 > X:\ bcdedit /set {default} device partition=C: > X:\ bcdedit /set {default} osdevice partition=C: > X:\ bootrec /rebuildbcd > > After doing that, the system partition appears as C:, passes chkdsk, and > the system boots successfully into Windows. > > 3 questions: > - what should I have done instead to create a dual-boot system on this > hardware (the above is ridiculous and took hours of trials and research) > - how can I make CentOS boot by default (since there is a valid EFI > record for Windows 8, that seems to take preference unless I hit F9 at > boot and manually select the disk) > - is it possible to make CentOS boot via EFI rather than from the legacy > partition boot record ? > - how can I make Windows boot from GRUB ? (I tried > "bcdedit /export C:\Boot\BCD", but that did not help - or I have the > wrong file or syntax) > > Some documentation refers to a tool in Windows 8 called "EasyBCD", but I > can't find it in my system. > > > > -- > Andrew Daviel, TRIUMF, Canada > Tel. +1 (604) 222-7376 (Pacific Time) > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos