UX32VD or UX31A EFI files

Hi guys, I think I messed some stuff up with my EFI when trying to set up a dual-boot with Ubuntu. Can anyone either list the files in their EFI partition or recovery folder or upload a .zip file with the recovery stuff? It would be hugely appreciated.

 

Not sure why you need an "EFI" partition? Why not just reformat into 2 partitions, one Win and one Ubuntu?

 

There was already a pre-existing EFI partition. It's what this laptop uses for booting. Also, I installed Ubuntu to the SSD. Are you saying the UEFI is unnecessary?

 

It is unecessary. I had an "EFI" partition as well, but deleted all existing partitions and created a single partition for my clean Windows reinstall. Boots faster than ever (likely because of all the bloat gone). There's a thread in this subforum that guides you through a fresh reinstall.

To be clear, I am using an UX31A, but having read the various reinstallations people are doing, I don't think that matters.

 

I've disabled it as a boot partition, but when grub loads and I select the Windows 7 option, I keep getting an error that says "invalid EFI filepath". That's what led me to believe it was required.

 

Interesting. How did you go about achieving the dual-boot? I'm willing to bet that you installed Ubuntu, with Windows being the stock installation? I am no expert with Ubuntu, but I'm thinking that Grub doesn't know how to deal with booting Windows when its using an EFI setup.

This is purely speculation, but if you were to install Windows in a traditional arrangement, then GRUB would be able to properly build the boot path.

Given that a fresh install of Windows has shown itself to me to be useful - both in general snappiness of the computer as well as freeing up 30GB of HD space, I'd do what I said before - kill all existing partitions, and split the drive into two partitions, one for Windows and one for Ubuntu (in whatever allocation you desire). Then have GRUB set to be the default boot manager, and you'd be good to go. Just like any other dual-boot!

 

Hi,
Just to give my experience with this wonderfull ux32vd
I just installed SSD 128Go to replace the 500g.
I installed ubuntu 64bits on the 24 iSSD and Win 7 on the SSD (samsung 830)
I deleted all partitions and convert drives in MBR mode, for the install of windows, no problem, and no more efi.
But each time i installed ubuntu, the drive was not more present in the bios boot list! Impossible to boot from grub, that's because ubuntu installer were converting the drive in GPT.
To fix this, i boot on live cd and before install, i use gparted to convert in 'msdos' mode (MBR). I created my main partition (ex4) and swap one.
During install, i just modify my main partition to give a mount point '/' but without formatting it, then install.
My iSSD is now on the bios boot list, i boot on grub on iSSD and it can boot both systems.

One question, is this better a system with efi or normal bios ?

 

What exactly is EFI anyway?

 

It's a package with a bunch of different things. Boot-time services and run-time functions. An efi setup on a disk could look like a bit like this.

Parts of, or the entire physical disk is one GPT-partition (requirement). Each partition inside the gpt-partition will have it's own unique ID. The bios will see that there is a gpt-partition, and will want to launch a valid efi boot-point inside the gpt-partition. This could be Asus' efi-boot manager, grub with efi-support, or rEFIt, etc. And other operating systems with it's own efi-boot, that then will launch the normal boot-manager (read: Windows).

So a valid EFI-setup that will boot, will contain a gpt-partition, have a bios detect it, before launching one of the possibly several valid boot-points inside the gpt-partition.

It's not really that complicated. The loader itself is just a partition on the disk with it's own files and and programs. The problem so far is that all the uefi managers are completely different from manufacturer to manufacturer, and require you to possibly do undocumented steps to launch a secondary boot. So when you install grub with (or without) efi-support, the smoothest way would be to add grub in the first boot-manager, and launch linux or windows from there, instead of chainloading. Otherwise you have to install linux inside the gpt-partition, or chainloading windows won't work.

For example - you have win7 on the disk, the disk covers the entire partition. So you resize the partition, have unallocated space at the end, and make a new partition, install linux there. Now, that linux-partition is not inside the gpt-partition, and you will install linux and write (possibly for the first time) anything to the mbr. And a default bios will then give precedence to that mbr boot, successfully booting grub from a new primary partition. The gpt-partition being the first primary partition.

The linux install will then very likely have added the win7 boot-point inside the gpt-partition. But when you chainload it, it breaks.

Same would happen if you installed linux on a second disk, or on a memory card, that kind of thing. So when you have a pre-installed boot, make sure you create space for a new linux install inside the gpt-partition. Or else install linux and add a boot-manager to the new primary partition, and then add an entry in the original efi-manager to that new boot-point. That could be something like .. sdb (the first on an ssd would be sda), an usb or memory card might be at sdc. Secondary hdd at hdd1, etc.

I think almost all new asus computers have something like "launch uefi shell" in the bios menu, for example, or in the first efi-screen - this just launches a program packaged in something like /boot/efi/shellx64.efi on the root of the gpt-partition.

So it's not completely impossible to get around this. But I know a few people who have rEFIt on a memory card or an usb, and use that to launch all "secondary" OSes. That's.. a good option, since it doesn't really touch the original boot sequence. But it's inconvenient in some ways, since choosing the boot partition often isn't exposed in the bios. Unnecessary hurdle asus gave us there, imo.

 

Thanks for the explanation Nipsen. If I understand correctly, in light of the below, wouldn't it just be easier to kill all the partitions on the SSD, then create two fresh ones in the normal way (therefore not GPT, but MBR), and then have Grub serve as the boot manager? Since the Windows 7 partition is not GPT, the boot point that Grub provides should then work, no?

 

Yeah. That's been the way it has worked for a long time. So either that.. write boot reference for grub into mbr, use primary/extended partitions (or virtual filesystems), and use grub as boot-manager.

Or else use an efi-boot manager like rEFIt. Then you can have a linux boot outside the gpt-partition as well.

..btw - one thing you need to look out for when partitioning before a windows install. Windows will add some partition table information to the last existing/active partition on the system - at some point during the install. So if you have an empty partition at the end of the disk (easy to end up with that after using partitionmagic, or in the windows install itself), and then delete that partition to install linux, etc, then you break the windows boot.

 

I can't try it now as this is my work laptop, so I'll play around with the dual-boot setup using everyone's recommendations this weekend and hopefully report back. Thanks for the help everyone.