dual boot problem

[Bill Stanley]

On 07/07/2013 09:31 PM, Doug wrote:
> On 07/07/2013 09:10 PM, squareyes wrote:
>> Hi all,
>> I have an HP laptop with win 8 and Ubuntu 1304 AMD 64 bit desktop,
>> this morning I after a month of no use I tried this morning, to boot win
>> 8 from grub menu
>> and got
>>
>> Error: can't find command 'drivemap'
>> Error: invalid EFI path
>> press any key to continue
>>
>> This puts me back to the grub menu.
>> Last time I used this machine both systems were working fine. Ubuntu
>> 13.04 will boot and run ok
>> only need to fix video driver (amd radeon) but can live with that at the
>> moment.
>> I rarely use win 8, but would be handy if I could use it now and again.
>> If I re-install 13.04,
>> would this be likely to fix the problem?
>> Any advice would be very much appreciated,
>> many thanks in advance.
>> Take care
>> Winton
>>
>
> If you have a repair disk for Windows, then run it. It should repair
> Windows boot setup, and you will not be able to boot into Linux, but
> that's fixable too: Run the install disk for the Linux distro, and
> it should have a boot repair section, which you need to run. I don't
> know how Ubuntu does it, but in PCLOS, for instance, you would run
> "redo mbr." I don't know how to fix it without a Windows repair disk,
> and I doubt that reinstalling Ubuntu would help.
>
> (For anyone running this kind of dual boot that's still working,
> Windows has a means of making a repair disk. You should do it now
> if you don't have one!)
>
WS=>   WARNING!!!
I had a HP laptop also but with Windows 7 instead.  I  ran into a 
similar problem and purchased a repair (or is it     restore) disk from 
HP to fix this problem.  I ran the program on their disk and it restored 
it back to the pristine, new from the factory state.  Beware the HP 
restore disks!

      Luckily this was a new laptop without any user data.  All my 
previous work to get it to dual boot was lost.  It was then that I 
discovered that HP formats the HD to have 4 primary partitions.  This 
leaves no space for the extended partition which will allow you to have 
more than 4 partitions.  My solution?  Use Linux to back up the the 
fourth partition.  Then use the utility that comes with Windows to 
resize your partitions leaving enough unused space for Linux.  Then 
install Linux.  Delete the fourth HP installed partition, and make the 
entire unused space an extended partition.  Make the first logical 
partition the old HP partition and later restore the data on it.  The 
rest of the space you can devote to Linux as you see fit.  Restore the 
windows boot capability using the appropriate Linux utility (I forget 
what I used).  This worked for Windows 7 on a HP Pavilion dv6 (laptop). 
  You might have complications with the Windows 8 boot scheme.  Also HP 
might have quit using the 4 primary partition scheme that caused me such 
grief.


Bill Stanley