Thanks for this, it actually does help confirm I grabbed the wrong file for the mate install as the am64 seems to be the compatible with eufi. Now my issue is the reinstalling a Windows 7 in a previously installed Windows 8 pc lol. Just need the right tools to make the proper eufi bootable usb with my windows copy and weāll be in business. Starting from scratch, thanks again for the contribution, any piece of info does help.
Iāll take a look at it for sure. Really appreciate your help. I have searched around and I know that most motherboards will vary slightly but I do know that āfast bootā, āsecure bootā and āCSMā or āEUFIā will almost always be listed in one way or the next. Iāll review a few guidelines here and there along with the attached video to be sure before continuing with my quest. Iām pending a new Win 7 install and then try to dual boot with the correct amd64 Ubuntu-Mate distro.
Edit: Watched the video and itās pretty good, being that the mobo is asus a lot of the labels are similar to mine. I see that I have to enable CSM(which I had, I actually tried every setting possible), select the EUFI source, in my case USB and so forth butā¦ it doesnāt go into any details on how the usb has to be formatted. I think to be eufi compatible the partition table or boot loader(sorry but not sure what im talking about here) has to be GPT instead of the usual MBR. Whats odd is that it allows be to boot to the live Ubuntu usb, not sure if thatās gpt or mbr?
I have to get an app to create a bootable usb in gpt form. That or my last resort is make a DVD with the Win 7 ISO.
Found this little piece of information. Confirms that I have to use an app that allow me to format the usb in gpt or use a CD to be able to load windows. Thank you all for the help. I will resume my initial goal and update, mark as resolved as well.
With regard to formatting your USB stick, it should be pre-formatted to FAT32!.
When you create your Ubuntu Live disk (whether DVD or USB); it has UEFI tools included and you donāt need to worry about GPT and the like!. (Unless it doesnāt happen then you need to create a GPT partition manually!: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EFI_System_partition )
MBR is the āMaster Boot Recordā which is placed at the beginning of the hard drive and is also automatically taken care of!.
CSM is the newer name for UEFIās other name āBIOSā so if you can change that, do so!. 
If I disable CSM then It wont boot into anything or at least not the USB, whether it be Ubuntu live or windows, hence I left csm enabled. I think in order to boot USB for the windows OS install I have to use it in CSM/EUFI mode, since my laptop originally came with windows 8 installed. I could be wrong, but I know at least now with the usb im using to boot windows Os, which I believe it was created in MBR, it wont boot. Iāll try making one in gpt see if that works.
Question: if I disable CSM, meaning running legacy, I should be able to boot using my USB(windows 7) formatted using mbr?
So the new Ubuntu live comes with the eufi tools, is this all of the version,intelx86 and AMD64? I guess this could explain why I was able to boot with it.
I am not quite sure what you mean here?. You need to run/use CSM in order to boot from disks/USB sticks!.
The MBR will be overwritten by the Ubuntu GRUB installer, you should install Windows first and then Ubuntu, see the partitioning guide on how to create your partitions!.
Read the first part of this guide and make sure Windows is on the left! 
Well I guess explains my experience(below), not being able to boot anything(when I had a clean HDD, no OS) when I disabled CSM. 
I do have a question now that I skimmed through the guide. I deleted the partitions I had in my HDD, leaving me without nothing, but there were a couple of, partitions, if they could be called that which had a key displayed. Ex. /dev/sd3 (key picture)ā¦ something like that, I donāt recall if it was the swap file or something else but I do know I couldnāt remove them to start with a clean completely unallocated HDD.
Lastly Wolfman i do appreciate the time taken and the quick responses, Iāve learned a lot from this and i will make sure to leave this thread solved. Donāt think Iām just sitting here asking anything and all that comes to mind with no end 
These could be OEM partitions. The best way to start with a completely blank HDD is to use GParted which will also give you the option to start clean with a new MBR or GPT. If youāre deciding to use Windows 7, MBR is required (it cannot boot from GPT, I believe)
GParted is on the live session under System ā Administration. The option is under Device ā Create Partition Table
I was using Gparted via the Live Ubuntu usb. It wouldnāt let me delete these small partitions, if I recall correctly I had one of about 30gb and the other one was a few MBās.
So if I go Device>Create I should be able to wipe the HDD? If not, how can I wipe it completely.
I thought that I needed to create a bootable GPT usb in order to be able to install Windows 7 on my laptop. The problem im having now is that I canāt boot using USB to install Windows 7 and im thinking is due to the eufi needing a gpt. Iām a bit confused but getting better.
Youāre saying I should use Gparted to clean the HDD and set the two partitions(there), the first being the NTFS for windows and then the ext3?
Creating a new partition table starts the drive over (but doesnāt āblankā the drive entirely). The partition table is what stores information about partitions on the drive.
- CSM/EFI mode = GPT, but can work with MBR.
- Legacy/BIOS mode = MBR
If that fails for bizarre reason, then the command dd can blank (āzeroā) the entire drive start to finish (this can take agesā¦)
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda
This is a bit mind boggling 
ā Just to clarify, only the 64-bit version of Windows 7 supports UEFI booting and installing to a GPT disk. Iāve gotten confused when Iāve tried it with 32-bit, which cannot do that.
Once your drive is āemptyā, Iād suggest installing Windows 7 first using whichever mode that works with the disk formatted with the appropriate partition table.
Windows wants two partitions (crazy OSā¦!), one 100 MB for āBootā and the rest for the OS, thatās up to you if youād like to partition beforehand or during Windows Setup and leaving enough for Ubuntu MATE.
Once Windows is dealt with, you should be good to go installing Ubuntu MATE afterwards. 
So just deleting the partition and creating a new one NTFS that is(for the new windows install, or should i leave unallocated and let the windows install format), should wipe clean the other things lingering? Thatās odd, i know i wiped the partitions but these smaller ones remained. Ill double check today to extra sure about what is saw.
Perfect, this makes perfect sense and I am installing a 64bit wind 7 so that should go as planned. Thanks for this, I think I should have enough to get me through.
Iād create a new partition table with GParted, since the whole thing is getting a new start. Itās like taking the entire drive back to factory fresh hard disk. 
You could let Windows Setup take care of the unallocated space and do its thing. If you do, afterwards youāll need to shrink the Windows drive for Ubuntu, which can be done within Windows using Disk Management.
When setting the new partition table in gparted i have to select GPT or MSDOS, as i donāt recognized the other ones.
Oh and the partitions that wouldnāt let me do anything, had the key, its because i had to swap off(it was mounted). Once i did that i was able to create new partition table under "Deviceā>Create partition table.
Update: So far so good, i was able to format the two usbās i had one install my eufi compatible windows 7 boot usb (GPT scheme, using rufus), I did the HDD using GParted and started with a fresh unallocated drive for the windows install. I let windows do the rest as suggested, success. Installing drivers and getting win 7 up and running like i wanted. I already have my amd64 eufi compatible live usb with ubuntu-mate ready to try the dual boot once more. Ill go over the guide before attempting this once more. Thanks a bunch. Iāll report back if i could get it running and solve this long mind boggling thread.
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Running into a little bit of a snag. I installed Win 7 but my laptop which originally came with 8.1 I'm running into this little issue(picture attached) and i think it could have something to do with the amd64 ubuntu-mate being eufi compatible. Should i run the regular non- eufi(intel386) version. Please see attached, i'm afraid to proceed and screw everything up again. The first time around i think it was right to run the sufi compatible version of ubuntu mate since i was using Win 8.1 as opposed to Win7 now which doesn't seem to be eufi compatible.
Not sure i should use the intel386 version. I think i should stick to the amd64 version but make the usb bootable partition scheme mbr for bios and or eufi as the gpt version only gives me the error pictured. I think my issue is installing a windows 7 on the windows 8 machine, this just complicated things a bit more lol.
Update: After much or nothing.. i continued in eufi mode and created the partitions, using the guide here, manually. I'm really hoping i could get the Grub menu and be able to run these two guys. I'l update. Thanks
Update 2: Ran fine with the choice above, was able to install and continue with my "something else" installing. I didn't get the grub menu but pressing the SHIFT key right after boot forced the grub menu to appear and i could now dual boot!
About this(instructions to reinstall grub at the bottom) i installed windows and ubuntu but now i boot to ubuntu and not Grub menu is available. I see the instructions below but I'm confused as to whats meant by "mount the linux partition", is this the /partition or the /home?
Side note- As read in another guide, i pressed the shift key while starting up and got the grub. Just wanted to see if you could help with this sudo disk -l result
Itās the root Linux partition where Ubuntu is installed. In your case, it would be /dev/sda6 - the 18.6 GB partition.
Looking at the UEFI Error in the previous post, Windows 7 may be unbootable being installed in BIOS mode for some reason?
Got it, so the / partition lol. Sorry my terms arenāt fully up to date as iām learning about most of these things froths thread. Thanks for pointing out the correct one. The UEFI error came out on both instances i tried to install via the bootable usb i made(ubuntu-mate), one had a partition scheme of gpt and the other had an MBR with uefi and bios compatibility, since i thought this was the issue.
What can you tell me about the red error in the gdisk -l output?
Iād like to mark this thread solved as i can now dual boot between my windows 7, installed in a windows 8.1 machine and Ubuntu-Mate 15.10. There isnāt āone answerā that solved it but all the input from you sir and mr. wolfman. Iāll be going through the guides and begin with my linux OS learning experience.
Glad to hear itās all set up and working! 
Iāve seen that warning, my data drive says the same thing. These answers explain it well.
You could modify the partitions so they are perfectly aligned on the drive while itās a fresh install with little data to shuffle around. It might improve I/O (Input/Output]) performance, depending on the hardware. Windows might will break its boot configuration and require you to repeat all of the steps again, so maybe itās not worth it.
Appreciate that, although not worth it at the moment like you said. I donāt really have anything important but after all i went through. Iāll play around with the OS a bit and get more familiar with it. 
In short to recap for future assistance to to others.
PS- I initially started trying to dual boot Win 8.1 and Ubuntu mate but I chose the wrong distro, I picked intelX86 instead of Amd64. Even though my settings were ok in bios(safe boot, fast bootā¦) I still had not disabled āfast bootā under the power saving options in Windows OS(control panel) so this may have been the reason why after I successfully installed Ubuntu, I still didnāt get the GRUB.
It was all downhill from there 
, I started messing with the partitions and eventually messed up my Windows partition to the point of having to install another version of Windows, 7, that is, which is not exactly the same as 8.1 from e uefi point of view. Well the rest should be more than enough help for anyone else.
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