Installing disaster

Support & Help Requests
1

Hello Mate community.
Some time ago I installed Ubuntu Mate on my PC as a dual boot on a separate ssd to try it out. I was very pleased and wanted to let my girl have a try as well.

She diddnt have a spare ssd so I wanted to install it on the existing ssd, next to Windows 8. Obviously W8 had to stay on the ssd to go back to. Not knowing the exact procedure I went ahead with my own best plan.

  1. I split the ssd to make a separate partition of 40G.

  2. Started the installation from a data stick with Ubuntu Mate on it for installation.

  3. To choose the right option was not totally clear for me. Install UM next to Windows or as a separate installation. Because I had made a separate partition for it I choose NOT for the option 'next to other OS.

  4. So I installed it as a separate installation.

  5. After reboot it started into Grub. From here I could go to Ubuntu and that worked just fine.

  6. There was however no option for going to Windows !? I could not just close Grub and let the boot procede to Windows.

  7. I tried to find a way to change Grub so that I could get it to boot to W8 but could not find it or it was to difficult. I think that I could insert a line by hand, but that is to hard for my minimal of Linux skills.

  8. So I found a way to get rid of Grub, with the Installation CD from Windows, which I did.

  9. Then I had Windows back but no Linux because I deleted Grub.

  10. My plan then was to delete the whole Linux partition and let the installation of Linux split the partition anew and install Linux next to Windows, so it would appear in Grub.

  11. So I tried that and I ran into unclarities in the installation. The partition where windows was installed was no longer marked as a windows partition, probably due to the former installation of Linux and/or Grub and the removal thereof.

  12. I wanted to then split the partition where Windows was installed, during installation, so that it would be seen in Grub.

  13. this was a very obscure process in which it kept saying the partition was to small for the installation, until I made it about 72 GB !
    14 I also marked it for formatting linux filesystem ext 4 (?) so it would be the right type for the Linux.

  14. It was all so obscure and unclear what would happen so I decided NOT to start the installation. I didn t trust it would be safe. (windows not being marked on the windows partition etc).

  15. When I rebooted I got the shock of what I was afraid for. The new partition was already made! Right over the Windows partition. The whole of W8 was gone!

  16. I hadn t started the installation and still it already created the partition and formatted it to Linux Ext4. Without warning me or asking if this is really what I wanted !

  17. During this part of the installation it was totally not clear if it was getting the info of what it was later to do or if it was going to do things right away!

  18. And it was to me also not clear what the right way ahead was for my installation and what everything encompassed.

  19. Apparently a deadly combination.

  20. So now I am going to install Windows 10 first. Then I am still interested in getting Linux as a try for her but I am not going to go ahead again like I did, however, it must be much clearer for me what to do, otherwise I will let it pass.

  21. I hope some of you can shed some light on what went wrong and what would be the right way to approach the installation.

JR

2

Not entirely sure what exactly went wrong but I agree with your decision to take it slow and to be sure before trying again. All I can offer in that respect is…

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WindowsDualBoot

Just start reading. There is a lot of information out there on how to best approach your intended goal but the first step should always be to research the subject.

Good luck. Let us know how you fare if you do try again.

3

I am no expert like the others here, but I would have thought if you did do a side by side installation with Windows you would have a dual boot Grub.

Also, I did have a boot issue once that I resolved by booting into Mate livecd and running boot-repair. “boot repair” recreated a new Grub.

4

Well, first I am not sure how you resized the partition. But one thing is for certain; never move boot partitions. If you really have to, expect to be screwing around with making the system bootable again. Resizing is perfectly alright… unless the NTFS partition is encrypted. That might cause some issues with resizing partitions, and if you’re not really sure you should shrink the volume in Windows with devmgmt or some other third-party solution with Windows running, rather than resizing in gparted. I know none of my parts are encrypted, hence why I feel comfortable resizing in gparted.

If you’re just trying to undo your mistake and get her back into Windows, use ms-sys (search for it here) and fetch a version compatible with her machine’s architecture. That will let you write a WIndows 7 MBR (all versions of Windows for and after work with it), which will supersede grub, and then you can (maybe) force Windows to show the Linux partition at-boot. Else a better way in the future, if you are not really sure about overwriting the bootloader is to write the bootloader to a different media, say a 512MB USB drive, SD card, or some other small mass-storage media. Just be sure to back everything up first; starting with a fresh drive then tampering with it after will prevent significant issues in the future.

There is a GUI solution for GRUB and fstab, and it’s called grub-customizer. Search for it on Google. You may have some better luck modifying /etc/fstab by hand if you use that.

Finally if you have a boot media with Windows 7 or greater, you can do the whole fixmbr thing if the ms-sys solution doesn’t sound favourable to you.

Also if this is an EFI boot issue, you’re hearing nothing from me because I don’t deal in that.

5

Actually I kind of take back what I said; Ubuntu has trouble reading compressed NTFS partitions, so when you reinstall Windows do not allow for compression. This also adds the side-benefit of being able to use Windows Disk Image Burner to mount files directly in Explorer, rather than using third-party tools like Alcohol 52% or ImDisk Virtual Disk Driver.