On a BIOS-GPT system (i.e. no UEFI):   I partition my disk this way:   1) 2MiB with the bios_grub flag  2) 1GiB ext2 for /boot  3) 30Gib ext4 for / for Gentoo.  4) the rest divided for other distros and for /home.   My question is concerning the second partition, the ext2 for /boot/.  In gparted, do I need to set the 'boot' flag?  I read conflicting  about it:         "Some buggy BIOSes or EFIs configured to boot in BIOS/CSM/legacy mode might also have problems with booting from GPT labeled disks. If that is the case, it might be possible to work around the problem by adding the boot/active flag on the protective MBR partition which has to be done through fdisk with the -t dos option to force it to read the partition table using the MBR format."    ...    "When using the UEFI interface to boot the system (instead of BIOS), mark the boot partition as the EFI System Partition. Parted does this automatically when the boot option is set on the partition:"    ...    "Type a to toggle the bootable flag on a partition and select 2. After pressing p again, notice that an * is placed in the "Boot" column."       elsewhere I read that the 'boot' flag on an uefi system was for a partition of type fat32 (vsfat).   Basically, I am confused: the 'boot' flag is to be used for BIOS or for EUFI or both?  Should I set it for my ext2 /boot/, or I shouldn't, or it doesn't matter either way?
50933
Is the "bootable flag" needed in today's distributions? If not, then why is it still in the installers? What is it exactly?
45116
I wonder what the GPT Reserved Partition and the GPT EFI System Partition are for. Do I need them and what would happen if I removed them?  Also what is it for?  I mean the 2nd and 3rd one in the picture.
55365
I have an X-series Asus laptop which I just bough about a month ago. I want to dualboot Ubuntu - Windows.  I can easily access LiveUSB with both UEFI enabled and disabled. I heard that there were problems with UEFI, so I disabled it. After I've installed the system I couldn't access it. It just boots to Windows straight.  Another unusual thing, that never happened to me before was that the partition editor wanted me to create a BIOS reserved area, which I did, but not at the beginning of the table.  Any ideas how to access the Ubuntu partition?  As far as I can guess both Windows and Ubuntu have to be both of the same type of boot, either Legacy or EFI. This is not the case of what I have now. So, if I reinstall Ubuntu in UEFI mode that correlates with my Windows type, will I then be able to boot into it?  I have a constraint, my laptop doesn't have a CD ROM, so I cannot reinstall WIndows, nor can I move around the Windows recovery partition.  This is the boot-repair report :    SOLUTION  I've enabled UEFI in BIOS, and reinstalled Ubuntu with UEFI enabled. It works fine now, although if I select Windows from the GRUB menu, it doesn't work. But I can live with that, since I can just select Windows boot from the BIOS instead.
119836
On an Acer PC, after installing any Linux system with any bootloader, I can boot it once, but after a reboot the UEFI Linux entry is gone.  The Linux system's file in the EFI boot partition seems to still be here.  I tried this with Ubuntu and ArchLinux, with GRUB and systemd-boot.  Why does this entry disappear simply by booting the system ?
95981
I am trying to install Ubuntu on to a clean system and use XFS for the system partition. However it seems that my UEFI system does not like XFS.  When installing I select 'something else' and manually partition the disk. As part of troubleshooting as have put the partitions back to the bear minimum of a single ESP partition and a system partition. When I choose EXT4 for the system partition the system installs and then boots successfully. When I do everything exactly the same, but change the system partition to use XFS the system installs but when it reboots I am presented with the grub prompt. When listing disks (ls (hd0,gpt2)) the XFS partition is seen as unknown and unreadable.  What am I doing wrong and how can I install Ubuntu using XFS as the format for the system disk?
105808
Recently I changed my partition scheme from MBR to GPT, and during after conversion I saw a another partition named EFI ... I don't have a good idea what does it do or its purpose ... but I think it's use for backup's.  So my question here is can you explain/tell me about EFI and it purpose?
24844
I have a Sony VAIO S series with Windows 8 preinstalled, and I installed Ubuntu 12.10 on a new partition. When the PC boots Grub is display, and I can choose between Windows 8 (didn't worked at the beginning, had to change Grub settings) and Ubuntu 12.10. When I select Ubuntu 12.10 everything is OK, but when I use Windows 8, and I restart Grub isn't displayed anymore (Windows 8 boots immediately).  I booted a Ubuntu 12.10 LiveUSB, used efibootmgr, and found out that Windows 8 (each time it boots) changes EFI default bootloader from Grub to Windows Boot Manager.  How do I change this in Windows 8? I read something about bcdedit, but it does not work or I don't know how to use it...
100208
I have a PC with 5 hard drives (SSD and HDD). One of the drives has Windows 10. In the past, I have tried to install Ubuntu and Windows using the following method so there will be no interference between the two operating systems:  I Simply removed all the hard drives, except the one that I wanted to install Ubuntu, then install ubuntu and connect other hard drives. Then select the boot drive using the BIOS.  Can I do the same thing without taking out taking all the drives?  I mean I do not like  to see the GRUB on boot, I want windows to boot as default without the need for GRUB.
84142
I installed Ubuntu 11.10 on a newly bought Lenovo ThinkCentre Edge 71 (model: 1577-G3G) with EFI boot enabled. I opted for the Use Entire Disk option. Even though the installation process went without any problems/errors, when rebooting it now just gives me:     No bootable operating system. Insert bootable disk and press any key...   I figure this is because of EFI.   Regression:   I have checked the System Setup (F1 during POST) to find a BIOS option to disable EFI/UEFI boot, however, there is no such option for this machine. This might be caused by a "Secure Boot" feature in the BIOS. The hardware vendor does not know of any such "secure boot" setting in the BIOS that would prevent Linux from booting. Lenovo support did not know anything about a BIOS setting called secure boot. They also did not know of any limitations that would prevent Linux from booting. The  does not mention EFI, UEFI nor secure boot.   How do I install Ubuntu on a machine with EFI? - Or, since Ubuntu is probably already installed: how do I make it boot Ubuntu?
95026
I installed windows 10 on my laptop in UEFI mode with HDD GPT disk format, then I installed Ubuntu 16.04LTS on another partition. So I have Ubuntu dualboot with Windows 10 now.  I also installed rEFInd (it's like GUI for you to choose between different OSs) because I don't wanna use Grub2 as the default bootloader. Now I want to have Windows 7 too, but when I boot from the USB stick, an error screen showed up saying something like  the windows boot manager is having problems due to a recent hardware change   My system is still working fine so I don't know if the problem came from my system or if the setup I want is impossible.
102345
I've tried several approaches and it still boots directly to Windows 10. It is a Toshiba  with Windows 10 the original OS.  I read and tried to follow all prerequisite steps in , and first tried Ubuntu 14.14 LTS, which installed but showed no dual boot menu.  Various answers and sources  have suggested I could then tell the UEFI to start with Grub 2, but I see no such option. This Toshiba's UEFI config menu has never shown anything but the hard drive and USB as boot sequence options. The only other relevant setting seems to be Safe Boot on/off, which has never seemed to have any effect on behavior at any point in the hours and hours (and more hours) of trying things I have done. There is no "boot mode" option  - I suppose it is UEFI-only (no legacy option)?  The info-packed answerer said 15.04 has always just worked for him, so although I would prefer LTS, I tried Ubuntu 15.04, telling it to replace the 14.14 installation, and it is installed, but is equally unbootable.  I saw the suggestion that Toshiba may be violating the UEFI standard and annoyingly testing for "windows" in the file name and that I could rename the Linux bootloader to windows... but I don't know how to access the EFI partition - I assume I'd need to know how to find and mount it in Linux? I didn't see complete enough directions for my familiarity level, so I didn't try that.  Following advice on , I tried using a EasyBCD and managed to wipe my BCD making Windows 10 unbootable .  The most recent thing I've tried is , which I ran in all its steps but it had no visible effect. Its docs say the final steps should be to show its output data to my favorite help source, so here I am, and .  Any suggestions?
21048
I was replacing my Ubuntu 18.04 with Lubuntu 20.04. I wanted to keep my /home partition same. After creating /root , swap and changing mount point for /home partition the installer gave a warning that /boot/efi partition is not created Lubuntu 20.04 needs /boot/efi partition to boot. Please create a FAT32 partition and mount it as /boot/efi and enable flag esp. Then I created the /boot/efi  partition but there was no esp flag(s). I had installed Ubuntu 18.04 alongside windows10. What should I do now?
2326
Long story short, I installed ubuntu while I was watching netflix and feeling very lazy, and may have lost all my windows 7 files.  Quick summary:    -Windows 7 was installed on Legacy bios and I installed ubuntu on UEFI bios -ubuntu installer didn't detect any other OS on my computer and wanted to write over the disk, so I had to manually edit the partition    -Despite repeated warnings about partitioning windows in the ubuntu installer, I did this anyway, assigning 140 gigs to ubuntu and 500 to windows Now, my computer won't boot into anything but Ubuntu  -in Gparted, it still shows that I have two partitions, and windows 7 boot loader -However, I can't boot into the non-linux partition, and boot loader says I need a recovery disk.  My question is does anyone know if what I've done is fixable? I'm hoping that I can fix it using the way outlined in this thread:   Thanks for the help everyone!  Note: gparted shows:    Foudn linux image: /boot/vmlinuz - 3.13.0.30 - generic   Found linitrd image: /boot/initrd.img - 3.13.0 - 30 - generic   Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz - 3.13.0 - 24 generic   Found  initrd image: /boot/initrd.img - 3.13.0 - 24- generic   memtest   memtest   Found windows 7 (loader) on /dev/sda1
97731
I am setting up a dual booting headless Linux / Windows machine. I mostly want the machine to always boot up to Ubuntu, except for occasionally when I need to test something in windows.  I've installed Windows and Ubuntu, and currently it boots up to Ubuntu every time. I would like to be able to tell it to boot to Windows on the next boot only and then when I restart from Windows have the system return to booting Ubuntu.  I found  but I am using Ubuntu 14.04 server which has the newer version of grub. From what I've read, I need to make some changes to /etc/default/grub and use sudo grub-set-default when I want to boot to Windows.  I think those changes start with adding this to /etc/default/grub:  GRUB_DEFAULT=saved GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT=false   Anytime changes are made to /etc/default/grub I know that I need to then run sudo update-grub and which results in:  Generating grub configuration file ... Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-43-generic Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-43-generic Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-32-generic Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-32-generic Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.elf Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin Found Windows 7 (loader) on /dev/sda1 done   Since Windows is the 7th option in that list I believe I would run sudo grub-set-default 6 (0 based counting) - is this correct and is there a different method to get a numbered list of boot choices after the system is already booted?  Also, are the lines in /etc/default/grub sufficient to achieve this behavior or do I need to add additional configuration?
66960
I have a Lenovo Ideapad with pre-installed Windows 8.1 In order to install Ubuntu I disabled secure boot and changed boot mode from UEFI to Legacy. This allowed me to install Ubuntu and the grub loader is also showing an option to either boot into Windows or Ubuntu, but whenever I try booting to Windows it says Cannot load.  This happens because the boot order is set to Legacy mode and Windows 8 will boot only with UEFI. I am unable to access my BIOS from where I can change the boot order. I press F1/F2 on booting but it doesn't load the BIOS, and directly goes to the grub loader screen.  How can I make my Windows 8 run along with Ubuntu?
80533
I am a Linux user. I don't have Windows on my laptop. Also the hard drive size is less than 2 TB. Then why should I use GPT tables? Can't I go with old fasioned MBR?  I will be having two root partitions, two home partitions, and a swap space. So when a partition is not primary, but is extended, does that make any performance difference?
38586
I have a laptop that has Windows 7 64 bit Enterprise edition. It is already filled with plenty of Software and drivers.  The laptop (Dell E6220) supports booting through UEFI, but the insatllition was on legacy BIOS.  When I try to change the booting from Legacy to UEFI I get an error message that no boot device was found (the Windows 7 doesn't recognize as bootable). Is there any way I can configure the current install to allow booting from UEFI or do I have to format and reinstall?