Dual boot with Windows 8 on Toshiba failed

[Jim Byrnes]

In another thread I received some advice on installing Ubuntu 13.10 on a 
Toshiba laptop with Win 8. At first it seemed to work, but I did notice 
some oddities along the way.

At first I tried to install without setting up Win 8, when that didn't 
work I setup and booted to Win 8. Then I started the Ubuntu install.  I 
thought I would see the "install next to" option but I didn't.  The 
installer said it could not detect another OS, so I choose the "other" 
option.  I was able to create free space and then primary partitions of 
/, /home and swap.  At this point the install seemed to proceed normally.

The first thing I noticed was none of the LibreOffice apps would run.  I 
would see the logo and hear some disk activity but then the logo would 
disappear and the app never would open.

Then I started getting freezes that required a power off.

I noticed that updates were available so I installed them.  After the 
required reboot I was never able to boot Ubuntu again though I did boot 
Win 8 once.  I tried the advanced option in the grub menu and noticed 
that there were now 2 kernels. 3.11.30-11 generic and 3.11.0-8 generic. 
I tried both of them and both of their recovery options with no success.

I decided to reinstall 13.10. I booted the Live DVD and choose to 
install 13.10. I picked the option to reinstall 13.10. The install 
started and then I got a warning about not trying to write to sda2 & 
sda3. I clicked ok and then got a warning about not being able to create 
swap on sda3, I continued and then was presented with the install screen 
that said there was no OS present. At this point I selected quit and 
restarted the machine.

When  machine turned on the first screen I see is:

 >>>Start PXE over IPv4, Press [ESC] to EXIT

then:

No bootable device -- Please restart system

I saw a suggestion on the web to install and run boot-repar, it did not 
help.

I guess if I can't get this fixed I will just use the whole disk for 
Ubuntu as I doubt I would use Win 8 anyway. I had planned to keep it 
around as after all I did pay for it.

Regards,  Jim