Windows Boot Manager not working through Mint dualboot Grub Acer Aspire TC-710

[Skylekko]

Hello!

I created a forum in hopes that I could fix a problem with Mint 18.3 KDE. I took a break from trying to fix it but decided to go back to the forum and try what the last reply said, but I lost the USB that had the OS on it, so I decided instead to try Linux Mint 19 and create a new forum because there's an entirely new problem I've come across.

My PC is an Acer Aspire TC-710 that came preinstalled with Windows 10, but I now dual boot Windows 10 and Windows 8.1 on it. I tried getting Mint 18.3 KDE installed, but on boot up, it would skip Grub and go straight to Windows. I never ended up getting that installation of Linux to boot, and I think I might have figured out why because of Mint 19, but I'm not sure if this is the actual reason why.

I used YUMI 2.0.6.1a to create a bootable USB of Mint 19 with the ISO I downloaded. I may be wrong but if I look through the files it creates on the USB I can see Grub, and I think it's because with YUMI you can put multiples operating systems on one USB and choose which one you want to boot off of using Grub. I pressed f12 to select which device I wanted to boot off of, and the only selection I had was something like 'Windows Boot Manager.'

I'm not sure if it's because of the USB I'm using or the fact it uses Grub to boot with, but it seems like my PC can't properly detect anything that is Grub because of the settings in the UEFI. I don't have any Legacy settings, only Secure Boot. At the moment Secure Boot is turned off, but I'm not sure if it has to be like that

Thank you for any help,

- Tyler

[DAMIEN1307]

Did you disable fast boot and secure boot before enabling your USB or DVD as first boot in your UEFI?...if not, therein lies the problem, they need to be disabled first before it will work...also i would be using either "Rufus" or a program called "cdburnerxp" to create an ISO to burn to USB or DVD...DAMIEN

[Skylekko]

I disabled fast boot and secure boot, re downloaded the ISO, used Rufus on a different USB and tried to boot. I only see Windows Boot Manager

[thx-1138]

....................................

...on numerous Acer models, you need to first add a so-called 'Supervisor' password in your UEFI,
before being able to select the .efi file to be trusted. Process should be (roughly) similar to this.

[gm10]

Make sure you enabled USB boot in the UEFI, too. It can be disabled as a security feature. If you still don't see it then try the recommended http://etcher.io as per the official installation instructions to create the USB. Rufus tries to be smart and can perform some modifications when writing the .iso the USB, which can lead to problems. Etcher just writes it directly.

[Skylekko]

So I got Mint to boot from the USB and I installed it successfully, but on boot it still skips to Windows Boot Manager. I followed the steps in the link, but the UEFI is missing the setting to change the boot mode to UEFI, and it isn't showing EFI as an option. The UEFI says it will boot to Windows Boot Manager, and I can't change it to anything else other than just the hard drive alone, which then causes the pc to not boot anything at all.

[gm10]

Apparently ACER UEFI's don't support non-Windows as per https://wiki.osdev.org/Broken_UEFI_impl ... r_hardware

The workaround:

The only way to get it to boot something else is to replace \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi with the distro-provided grubx64.efi.

You can do that from the Mint live USB, right click a folder to open as root, then navigate to devices > efi where you'll find the folders mentioned above.

[Skylekko]

When I open as root, there is no efi in devices

[gm10]

In that case go Mint menu > Disks, find the ESP partition, click the triangle to mount it, click on the mount point link below.

[Skylekko]

Ok so do I rename bootmgfw.efi to grubx64.efi and if I do that will the dual-boot still work with the Windows Boot Manager?

[gm10]

Ok so do I rename bootmgfw.efi to grubx64.efi and if I do that will the dual-boot still work with the Windows Boot Manager?

No, you replace bootmgfw.efi with grubx64.efi from the Ubuntu folder. Meaning you rename bootmgfw.efi to bootmgfw.efi.bak (just in case you want to go back), copy grubx64.efi over and rename it to bootmgfw.efi. That effectively replaces the Windows Boot Manager but GRUB can boot Windows for you.

[Skylekko]

It works! Except there’s one problem. I deleted the original bootmgfw file instead of renaming it to .bak ( I think I read your reply wrong...? ) And if I try to go into windows boot manager through grub it just loops back to the grub menu.

[gm10]

Try

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sudo update-grub

from within your installed Mint.

[thx-1138]

...the UEFI is missing the setting to change the boot mode to UEFI, and it isn't showing EFI as an option....

...for future reference: theoritically, after setting an UEFI supervisor password,
for "Select an UEFI file as trusted for executing" to appear, Secure Boot does have to be enabled,
as already stated in the above aforementioned link (or eg. here).
I say theoritically, because by the end of the day, only you can know what Acer 'broke' in their implementation...
Also, since you dual-boot with Win, you could also use bcdedit (eg. here's an example on a similar model).

[Skylekko]

Try

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sudo update-grub

from within your installed Mint.

It’s still looping back to the grub menu whenever I select windows boot manager

[gm10]

I was afraid so. Ok, so here's the file from my Windows 10 machine, copy it back to the original location (overwriting the existing one):
https://www.mediafire.com/file/15bg49l9 ... fi.xz/file

If you don't want to trust that, you'll need to use a Windows 10 repair/recovery disk to get it back.

Then follow these steps instead:

viewtopic.php?f=42&t=243338&p=1300722#p1300722

Those instructions make you backup the entire Microsoft folder instead of just that single file (the step that you had skipped in mine).

To add to those instructions, before you edit the /etc/grub.d/40_custom, run

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df /boot/efi

[Skylekko]

Not sure If I am copy pasting this right, but after doing

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sudo update-grub

I got this

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\Generating grub configuration file ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.15.0-42-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-42-generic
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.15.0-20-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-20-generic
Found Windows Boot Manager on /dev/sda1@/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
Adding boot menu entry for EFI firmware configuration
/etc/grub.d/40_custom.save.1: 1: /etc/grub.d/40_custom.save.1: menuentry: not found
insmod: ERROR: could not load module part_gpt: No such file or directory
insmod: ERROR: could not load module fat: No such file or directory
/etc/grub.d/40_custom.save.1: 6: /etc/grub.d/40_custom.save.1: chainloader: not found
/etc/grub.d/40_custom.save.1: 7: /etc/grub.d/40_custom.save.1: }#!/bin/sh: not found
/etc/grub.d/40_custom.save.2: 1: /etc/grub.d/40_custom.save.2: menuentry: not found
insmod: ERROR: could not load module part_gpt: No such file or directory
insmod: ERROR: could not load module fat: No such file or directory
/etc/grub.d/40_custom.save.2: 6: /etc/grub.d/40_custom.save.2: chainloader: not found
/etc/grub.d/40_custom.save.2: 7: /etc/grub.d/40_custom.save.2: }#!/bin/sh: not found
error: syntax error.
error: Incorrect command.
error: syntax error.
Syntax error at line 300
Syntax errors are detected in generated GRUB config file.
Ensure that there are no errors in /etc/default/grub
and /etc/grub.d/* files or please file a bug report with
/boot/grub/grub.cfg.new file attached.

[gm10]

Seems you got some left-over files in there:

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sudo rm /etc/grub.d/40_custom.save*

Also I had said nonsense about the set root= line, you'll need to point it to the Windows boot partition of course, not the EFI partition. It wouldn't be mounted. To find it:

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lsblk -f

[Skylekko]

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NAME   FSTYPE LABEL                                                MOUNTPOINT
sda                                                                
├─sda1 vfat   ESP                                                                          /boot/efi
├─sda2                                                             
├─sda3 ntfs   Windows 10 Acer                    
├─sda4 swap                                                                                  [SWAP]
├─sda5 ext4                                                                                         /
├─sda6 ntfs   Recovery                         
├─sda7 ntfs   Windows 8.1                          
└─sda8 swap                                                                                   [SWAP]

Which one is the Windows boot partition?

[philotux]

It looks like you have two Windows partitions:
sda3 ntfs Windows 10 Acer
sda7 ntfs Windows 8.1