(Solved) Linux Mint installed, want to dual boot Windows 8

[GoldFish]

(For quick reference: I reinstalled win8, then dual booted LM.)

I searched for this but did not find it.

Is there a tutorial on how to install windows 8 on a machine that already has linux only on it?
I just bought a refurbished HP 500-054, which came with windows 8. The first thing I did was try to create the back up dvd's for a windows reboot. On win 8 you can only make one, since it was refurbished I couldn't, so I called HP and got them sent to me. I was trying to get linux to dual boot beside windows 8 but could not find a tutorial that covered a harddrive with 6 partitions and could not get the partitions to change size. So, knowing the win8 disks were coming (and out of frustration and wanting my computer running), I wiped win8 and single booted linux.

So, can I install win8 beside linux mint 16 and is there instructions some where?

Thanks in advance.

[Mark Phelps]

You simply may NOT be able to do that. Why? An installation DVD would allow you to install to an unformatted space or to an existing NTFS partition, but the OEM restore disk set is likely to start by reformatting the entire drive -- in order to create the default partitioning scheme the OEM requires.

This varies by OEM and by the disks they provide -- so I can't tell you for sure that this is what the disk set is going to do.

[rbmorse]

IT's technically possible, but requires a lot of monkey motion to make it work correctly. Mark raises an important consideration, and from everything I've read, and from my personal experience, dual-booting Linux and Windows just works better if you install Windows first.

I'm running both Petra and Win 8.1 on my desktop.

[GoldFish]

Since I could not find any info on how to do that, i kind of figured it is/was as you two have said.

So, can you point me to some info to better understand partitions?
Especially dealing with 6.
I can not view them now but from what I remember, there was the main partition (the large one), one for the win8 backup/image, and I do not remember what the others were.
Where should I make a new partition (for linux), in the large one?
How much bigger should I make the partition than what is needed to install?
Do you make it bigger for updates?
How do I change the size because every youtube video I watched was not the same (none of them had more than 3, and none of them were in d) and the partition size would not change?

I may start this tomorrow, when I do I will be able ask more detailed questions.

Thanks for taking the time to answer questions.

[gold_finger]

@GoldFish,

Since your original Win 8 had 6 partitions, that means your computer is using UEFI firmware (vs. the old, familiar BIOS firmware) and the hard drive was using GPT partitions vs. MBR partitions. The older MBR partitioning is limited to 4 primary partitions, or 3 primaries and one extended partition to house several logical partitions. The newer GPT partition scheme can have up to 128 primary partitions without issue.

When you initially tried adding Mint to that disk, you needed to shrink one of those partitions to make room for Mint -- likely the one designated by Windows as the "C:" drive, but not sure of that. That should be done by using Windows disk management feature.

Like Mark Phelps said, it's likely that the OEM Windows disk that HP sends you will wipe out what's already there and you'll have to add Mint to it again. So backup anything you have there now that you want to keep. There are things you could try ahead of time to prepare the drive for the (remote) possibility that Windows won't wipe out Mint; but quite frankly, it can get too complicated and will likely cause more confusion than it's worth -- so I won't go into that.

Here's some good reading material on partitioning in general (GPT & MBR) and info on UEFI installations:

http://www.sysresccd.org/Sysresccd-Guid ... rtitioning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table
http://www.rodsbooks.com/linux-uefi/
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFI


After you install Windows 8, in preparation for your Mint install, do the following:
** Use Windows disk management to shrink the main (biggest) Windows partition to make room for Mint installation.
** After shrink of Windows partition, DO NOT use Windows to create Linux partitions -- leave that space as free, unformatted, empty space.
** Disable "Secure Boot" within the UEFI settings of computer.
** Disable "Fast Startup" (or similarly named option) within UEFI settings or Win 8 settings (I don't have Win 8, so not sure if it's in the OS or in the UEFI settings).
** Windows 8 does not normally fully shut down -- it instead suspends to disk in some kind of hybernation mode. You need to FULLY shutdown Win 8 before attempting the Mint install. (http://www.thewindowsclub.com/force-ful ... -windows-8)

To Install Mint:
** Adjust settings in either the UEFI Settings Menu or the UEFI Boot Menu to make sure the Mint DVD/USB boots in EFI/UEFI-mode.
** If you want more partitions than the standard / (root) and swap partititions, use GParted ahead of time to create them, then direct the installer to use each partition you made and specify their mount points.
** For standard install, just choose install option for "Along side Windows".
** If asked, direct bootloader installation to the ESP (EFI System Partition), not the MBR. (It will be a small 200-500MB FAT32 partition.)

[GoldFish]

Thank you for the help.

I did get Linux to dual boot with windows 8.
I have LM16 set up as the main partition (large one) with windows set up with what my old CPU had for space.

The only thing I would like to change is:
When Linux was the last OS used and you shutdown or restart it automatically gives you an option for LM or win8 at boot
BUT, when win8 was the last one used, it automatically boots straight to win8, you then have to go through the very annoying process of getting to the bios menu to change the boot order.

So, is there a way to get win8 to stop changing the boot order?
Yes, the following setting are as follows:
Secure Boot: disable
Legacy Boot: enable
Fast Start/Boot: disable
Yes, i have changed the boot order also, but when win is used it changes it back to load to win first.
It is crazy some people pay for win8.

[gold_finger]

I did get Linux to dual boot with windows 8.

So, apparently the OEM disk they sent did not wipe out Mint as we thought it would? Or did you have to re-install everything from scratch?

When Linux was the last OS used and you shutdown or restart it automatically gives you an option for LM or win8 at boot
BUT, when win8 was the last one used, it automatically boots straight to win8, you then have to go through the very annoying process of getting to the bios menu to change the boot order.

Odd -- not sure what's going on.

Boot into your installed Mint.

To give us a clearer picture of your set-up, can you open GParted and post back here with screenshots of all hard drives on the system? (Rename the screenshots to something that doesn't have spaces or special characters in the name before trying to upload them here with the "Upload attachment" tab in forum interface. Won't accept the default name of screenshot program.)

Also, open a terminal and post back here the output of these three commands showing partition structure:

Code: Select all

lsblk

Code: Select all

sudo fdisk -l

Code: Select all

sudo parted -l

(Last two commands end in lowercase "L", not number 1.)

Use the "Code" button on forum interface for posting the terminal output. Copy/Paste the output between the two code blocks "[ code ] [ /code ]".

[GoldFish]

So, apparently the OEM disk they sent did not wipe out Mint as we thought it would? Or did you have to re-install everything from scratch?

Sorry about that, I was not very clear as to what happened. The win8 disks did wipe everything with no obvious way to stop it and I did re-install everything for scratch and yes I always have all important files backed on an external.
I had found someone else saying the same thing with a dual boot LM and win8 that once in win8, it changes the boot order and they have to access bios everytime but everybody seems to be just using it that way.

Partitions screenshot in GParted is attached below

lsklk info:

Code: Select all

NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0   1.8T  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0  1023M  0 part 
├─sda2   8:2    0   360M  0 part /boot/efi
├─sda3   8:3    0   128M  0 part 
├─sda4   8:4    0   300G  0 part 
├─sda5   8:5    0  12.7G  0 part 
├─sda6   8:6    0  19.1G  0 part /
├─sda7   8:7    0  47.7G  0 part [SWAP]
└─sda8   8:8    0   1.5T  0 part /home
sr0     11:0    1  1024M  0 rom  

sudo fdisk -l info:

Code: Select all

WARNING: GPT (GUID Partition Table) detected on '/dev/sda'! The util fdisk doesn't support GPT. Use GNU Parted.


Disk /dev/sda: 2000.4 GB, 2000398934016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243201 cylinders, total 3907029168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xc73c4778

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1  3907029167  1953514583+  ee  GPT
Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary.

sudo parted -l info:

Code: Select all

Model: ATA ST2000DM001-1CH1 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 2000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt

Number  Start   End     Size    File system     Name                          Flags
 1      1049kB  1074MB  1073MB  ntfs            Basic data partition          hidden, diag
 2      1074MB  1451MB  377MB   fat32           EFI system partition          boot
 3      1451MB  1585MB  134MB                   Microsoft reserved partition  msftres
 4      1585MB  324GB   322GB   ntfs            Basic data partition          msftdata
 6      324GB   344GB   20.5GB  ext4
 7      344GB   395GB   51.2GB  linux-swap(v1)
 8      395GB   1987GB  1591GB  ext4
 5      1987GB  2000GB  13.7GB  ntfs            Basic data partition          hidden, msftdata

Just for clarity (not sure if you will be able to tell what partitions I added/changed)
I shrunk sda4 (as the screenshot shows this is where windows was installed by the disks) in win8 before LM install process
Then added and setup sda6 (installed LM here), 7 and 8 during LM install process.

[gold_finger]

Everything looks as it should from your output, so not sure why that's happening.

From a prior post, you stated:

So, is there a way to get win8 to stop changing the boot order?
Yes, the following setting are as follows:
Secure Boot: disable
Legacy Boot: enable
Fast Start/Boot: disable

I don't have a UEFI-based computer, so not sure exactly what that setting (in red) is/does. You should be booting both Mint and Windows in UEFI/EFI-mode (and I'm pretty sure you are), so lets just make sure that's the case. Windows definitely is, so we won't worry about that. To double-check Mint, boot into it and copy paste this entire code into a terminal and hit enter:

Code: Select all

[ -d /sys/firmware/efi ] && echo "Installed in EFI mode" || echo "Installed in Legacy mode"

It should return saying that Mint was installed in UEFI-mode. Assuming it does, run one more code:

Code: Select all

dmesg | grep -i EFI

If it returns a bunch of lines of output, that confirms that Mint is running in UEFI-mode. If nothing, or only a few lines are returned, then Mint is running in Legacy-mode. If Legacy-mode turns out to be the result here, post back to report that and don't do anything else yet.

Assuming both tests above confirm that Mint was both installed and is running in UEFI-mode, then my only guesses are that:

• 1. There is an incorrect setting somewhere in the UEFI Settings (Startup) Menu that needs to be changed.
  2. Windows is somehow changing something on its own whenever it gets booted up.

Have a thorough look through all of the UEFI settings related to booting and see if anything looks like it might be the culprit. Aside from that, I really don't know how to solve the problem.

If all else fails you can try using a utility called rEFInd to solve the boot issue. That might work and you can test it out with a live CD first to make sure. If it does, then follow instructions for installing it to your system. Here's the link: http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/index.html.

[GoldFish]

Sorry for the long delay in responding and thanks for the help!

Yes, LM is running in UEFI-mode.

As far as I can tell it's windows that changes the boot setting which really doesn't suprise me that they think they own my cpu.

I really don't use win8 much, in fact I have not booted win8 since the last time I posted on here.

The only reason I have kept win8 is to access local court records and for a luner-solar calender app.

Everything has been working so I will probably not mess with anymore settings except when I leave win8.

Again, thanks for help! I bought this computer and kept win8 for a new business, with your help I was able to get back to "business".