Unable to install grub in /dev/sda

Mon Oct 18 03:25:50 UTC 2021

I just found this:

Https://www.aioboot.com/en/windows-10-gpt-legacy-bios

Is that the answer?

Regards,

Phil

On Mon, 18 Oct. 2021, 1:17 pm Phil Fraser, <phillor9 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks Douglas for your reply.
>
> I've installed many versions of Linux on this laptop, the problem is that
> I upgraded Windows 7 to Windows 10 and, evidently, it's installed in the
> wrong mode.
>
> Liam, you ask a number of questions, one was "is Windows 10 installed as
> uefi". How can I tell? I have Windows 10 on a usb stick and I just followed
> the prompts. At the time I had Kubuntu 20.10 installed and it was
> unaffected by the Windows upgrade. Did you install Windows 10 from a usb
> stick, if so how?
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Phil
>
> On Mon, 18 Oct. 2021, 11:26 am Douglas McGarrett, <
> dmcgarrett at optonline.net> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 10/17/21 8:59 PM, Phil Fraser wrote:
>>
>> Thank you Liam and Ralf,
>>
>> I'm still in an area with poor mobile phone reception and I still need to
>> walk up a hill to do almost anything to do with Interneting. Anyway, I have
>> managed to install Debian 9 but it's a 32 bit version and although it does
>> run it's far from ideal.
>>
>> Please forgive me if this e-mail is not formatted correctly or I'm top
>> posting it's been difficult to reply at all. I'm not on my phone and I'm
>> struggling with gmail and a flaky Internet connection.
>>
>> It seems that Windows is the cause of my installation problems but I need
>> it to update my GPS navigator every six months. I'll study the links
>> provided but I'm truly at my wits end. I think that I might need some
>> serious hand-holding to install Windows in a mode that's compatible with
>> Linux.
>>
>> If Windows is installed first--as it will be on a new or refurb computer,
>> then installing most versions of Linux will go practically automatically,
>> altho you might want to
>> set partition sizes by hand prior to installing Linux.  (gparted is the
>> self-booting routine to do that. Download it and save it to disk or flash
>> drive to boot from it.) Make sure
>> that the Windows partitions still exist when you're done, but only the
>> main data partition is important in size. You might actually use it someday.
>> --doug
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sun, 17 Oct 2021 at 19:45, Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Sun, 17 Oct 2021 at 01:34, Phil Fraser <phillor9 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > I attempted to install Xubuntu, alongside Windows 10, on my aging
>>> Thinkpad T420 but have run into a problem, a serious problem. I spent all
>>> day searching for a solution to what seems to be a common problem.
>>>
>>> Hi. Typing on a T420 right now, on 20.04 with Unity. :-)
>>>
>>> > The installer warns me that I need to create an EFI directory or else
>>> the installation will fail, which it did many times. I already have an EFI
>>> directory, which it seems, Windows created when I upgraded Windows 7 to
>>> Windows 10. I already had Kubuntu 20.10 installed at the time and didn't
>>> need to reinstall it after the Windows upgrade.
>>>
>>> Is your disk partitioned with MBR or GUID?
>>> Does Windows start in UEFI mode or in Legacy Boot mode?
>>> What are your startup settings in the CMOS Setup?
>>>
>>> The T420 is from the time when UEFI was coming in.
>>>
>>> If you partition the disk with MBR, boot in BIOS mode and install
>>> Windows and/or Linux in BIOS boot mode, it appears to the OSes and
>>> runs as a BIOS system. You can press the Thinkvantage key and enter
>>> the setup at boot time.
>>>
>>> If you partition the disk with GPT and boot and install Windows and/or
>>> Linux in UEFI mode, it appears to be and works as a UEFI machine. You
>>> can no longer get the startup screen, boot options etc. You have to
>>> choose the Windows "shutdown and restart in safe mode" option.
>>>
>>> In other words, it is both and it depends how you have it configured.
>>>
>>> I tried UEFI mode as an experiment, found it was a pain to use, and
>>> reformatted and reinstalled in legacy BIOS mode, which I find  much
>>> easier.
>>>
>>> YMMV.
>>> >
>>> > One of the many suggestions that I came across was to select "Try
>>> Xubuntu" and then select "Install Xubuntu" from the desktop. That also
>>> failed with substantially the same  error. "Executing grub-install /dev/sda
>>> failed cannot find EFI directory" which is not much different to "Unable to
>>> install grub in /dev/sda". Logging out and then restarting I'm left with a
>>> prompt grub rescue>.
>>>
>>> Do custom partitioning. Tell the Ubuntu setup program where your EFI
>>> partition it.
>>> >
>>> > The following may help:
>>> >
>>> > xubuntu at xubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l
>>> > Disk /dev/loop0: 1.73 GiB, 1857892352 bytes, 3628696 sectors
>>> > Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
>>> > Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
>>> > I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > Disk /dev/sda: 931.51 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
>>> > Disk model: CT1000MX500SSD1
>>> > Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
>>> > Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
>>> > I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
>>> > Disklabel type: dos
>>> > Disk identifier: 0x0878bd2f
>>> >
>>> > Device     Boot      Start        End    Sectors   Size Id Type
>>> > /dev/sda1             2048     104447     102400    50M  7
>>> HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
>>> > /dev/sda2           104448  839874676  839770229 400.4G  7
>>> HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
>>> > /dev/sda3       1952485376 1953519615    1034240   505M 27 Hidden NTFS
>>> WinRE
>>> > /dev/sda4        839876606 1952157695 1112281090 530.4G  5 Extended
>>> > /dev/sda5        839876608  840925183    1048576   512M ef EFI
>>> (FAT-12/16/32)
>>> > /dev/sda6        840927232 1947567856 1106640625 527.7G 83 Linux
>>> > /dev/sda7       1947764736 1951670271    3905536   1.9G 82 Linux swap
>>> / Solaris
>>> > /dev/sda8       1947568128 1947752447     184320    90M 83 Linux
>>> > /dev/sda9  *    1951672320 1952157695     485376   237M ef EFI
>>> (FAT-12/16/32)
>>> >
>>> > This shows that I now have two EFI directories and a large boot
>>> directory. I had tried the installation without the second EFI directory
>>> and without the boot directory. The partition table is a GPT.
>>>
>>> 2 is bad.
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Liam Proven ~ Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
>>> Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ~ gMail/gTalk/FB: lproven at gmail.com
>>> Twitter/LinkedIn: lproven ~ Skype: liamproven
>>> UK: (+44) 7939-087884 ~ Czech [+ WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal]: (+420)
>>> 702-829-053
>>>
>>> --
>>> ubuntu-users mailing list
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>>>
>>
>>
>>
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