Grub2 with Mint 13 and Windows 8

[kbhit]

I'm having problems getting Grub2 and Windows 8 to work together. I use Linux Mint 13 Cinnamon and am using Grub2 to dual-boot. Before moving to Windows 8, I had Mint 13 & Vista working well together. My normal workflow is that system goes into the Grub2 menu and I can choose to boot Mint 13 or Vista. However, with Windows 8 things are different. I can only get either A) Windows 8 to launch (but Grub2 doesn't launch) and it goes straight to Windows without giving me the option to go to Linux or B) Grub2 launches and shows Windows 8 (but when I choose Windows 8 I get the windows logo for 1.5 seconds, then it restarts my computer). What I actually want is the Grub2 menu (in B) but for the Windows 8 option to work properly.

When Windows 8 doesn't launch, the only way I can fix it is to put Windows 8 in repair mode and use its command line to fix the MBR such as (/fixmbr /fixboot). That gets Windows 8 happy again, but it stops Grub2 from loading. To get GRUB2 back, I boot into Linux Mint 13 Installation DVD and run grub-install / grub-update commands. It detects the OS's ok. Grub-2 then comes up and lists both Mint and Windows 8, but Windows 8 reboots when it's selected. Can somebody please help me end this cycle and get the two OS's working together?

Some details about my scenario:
- My computer does not support UEFI
- Linux Mint is on a separate disk. The disk it's on is a 3TB disk (GUID/GPT) separated in partitions of this order:
Grub-Boot flag partition (for GPT compat) -> Linux SWAP partition -> Linux EXT4 (main linux partition) -> NTFS partition (for Data only - no OS)
- Windows 8 is on a different disk. This is a 200GB disk (no GPT setup). The only partition on this is the Windows 8 partition and it's set with the BOOT flag (there's a 2Mb of free space at the end).
- The BIOS boot order is to load the 'Linux Mint' disk first
- I've tried GRUB versions 1.97 and 1.99
- Both OS's are 64-bit

Many thanks

[keghn]

Hello.
Are you installing from windows, or booting into live Mint dvd, or usb live thumb drive?
Two way to install. windows way is ???? becouse most of the people here are linux pro.s.
l have been using grub for 7 years and works fine to select which to boot into, windows, or
linux.
I have never used windows boot manager and I think it's been around for about two years.

[kbhit]

Hello Keghn, both the operating systems are installed already (using DVD ISO's for both). To recover GRUB I boot into the Linux Mint 13 DVD as described above. To recover Windows 9 booting I enter repair mode (normally through the Windows 9 DVD).

[DrHu]

Windows 8 multiboot is included in this link..
http://dedoimedo.com/computers/grub-2.html

win 8x issues, secure boot mode..
http://www.ghacks.net/2012/10/12/window ... for-linux/

https://www.pcworld.com/article/260734/ ... _boot.html
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/opinion/soft ... cure-boot/
--Ubuntu, like Mint..

And efi modes..
http://arstechnica.com/business/2011/09 ... -installs/
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFIBooting

http://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloaders/grub2.html
http://www.rodsbooks.com/efi-bootloader ... ation.html

[keghn]

Try booting into a live Mint media and use "boot-repair".
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair.
I have used it two time and work great.

[kbhit]

I was able to SOLVE the problem! Last night I located a bug report filed with Redhat (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=753923) referencing 'drivemap' not working properly in Grub2. I don't really understand fully the details, but when I commented out the drivemap line, both Windows 8 & Linux Mint 13 load just fine from the Grub2 menu. Grub2's update/os-prober also add the problematic/drivemap line. The key is, to remove the drivemap line once it's added. I'm sure drivemap does 'map' drives correctly in some cases, but in my case it wasn't. And, my Windows 8 drive is the 2nd hard-drive, so apparently Windows 8 doesn't have to come first because it works fine with drivemap out of the picture.

The fix that worked for me, edit the following file and comment out the line below: /boot/grub/grub.cfg
### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ###
menuentry "Windows 8p (loader) (on /dev/sdc1)" --class windows --class os {
insmod part_msdos
insmod ntfs
set root='(hd2,msdos1)'
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root C4AC48E0AC48CE9C
# drivemap -s (hd0) ${root} <----- COMMENTING OUT THIS LINE FIXED THE PROBLEM
chainloader +1
}