GRUB disappears after booting Windows

[tjohnson]

I have installed Fedora 21 alongside Windows 8.1 on my 64-bit PC. I can successfully boot both OS's, but have a problem with the GRUB bootloader.

When I first restarted my computer after installing F21, GRUB came up as expected and I could choose either F21 or Win8. But after I booted into Win8 and restarted, GRUB no longer showed up, and my PC booted into Windows without allowing me to choose which OS to run. Turning Secure Boot off made no difference, and I have fast startup disabled in Win8 as is recommended.

I originally asked about this (when I was using F20) on Ask Fedora, and the community there pinpointed the problem to Windows resetting my PC's boot order, which it shouldn't be. My problem is that I can't figure out why it's doing this and how to prevent it from doing so.

To summarize: I can boot either F21 or Win8 from GRUB, until I boot Win8. After I boot Windows, GRUB disappears and I have to reset the boot order in the BIOS to make it reappear.

Basically, I want the boot order to be (1)GRUB, (2)Win8 bootloader; but Windows keeps resetting it to (1)Win8 bootloader, (2)GRUB. I've had this problem for several months now, so any help would be very much appreciated.

[lightman47]

BIOS ? That makes my brain crazy ... unless Fedora (and therefore GRUB) is on a secondary disk. Hmm. That being the case, I wonder why Windows would be adjusting the BIOS ... any chance you ran 'repair in Windows which might restore the boot?

Other than that, I'm baffled, but I'm no expert either.

[tjohnson]

BIOS ? That makes my brain crazy ... unless Fedora (and therefore GRUB) is on a secondary disk. Hmm. That being the case, I wonder why Windows would be adjusting the BIOS ... any chance you ran 'repair in Windows which might restore the boot?

Other than that, I'm baffled, but I'm no expert either.

Both OS's are on the same disk. I shrank my Windows partition to make room for Fedora, and told the Fedora installer to automatically create partitions in the blank space on my disk. So my disk has a Windows partition, and a Fedora partition and 500MB GRUB partition both created by the Fedora installer.
I've tried formatting my disk and reinstalling Windows and Fedora, but that didn't help.

[lightman47]

Betcha it's UEFI doing it

[tjohnson]

Betcha it's UEFI doing it

Yes, I agree that the problem is likely related to UEFI (the Undesirable Extremely Fierce Intruder ). Any ideas how can I fix it?

Several months ago I asked about my problem on Ask Fedora, and someone there suggested it might be an HP problem. So I contacted HP, and they said to contact Microsoft about it. So I contacted Microsoft Answer Desk, and they said the problem was too advanced for them and that I should contact Microsoft Pro Answers about it. So I had a live chat with them, and they said they would send me an email, but I haven't gotten one. So now I'm getting desperate

On a completely different topic, why does the forum think that I'm using "windows_98_nt_2000" when I post from my Windows 8 PC? It correctly detected WinXP when I posted from a different PC last night.

[lightman47]

There are many posts on here about getting UEFI and your situation to work. You're not alone. I know very little about UEFI, except after first responding to your query I remembered working on a friends computer with UEFI and having it constantly reverting back to the original settings.

Can't speak to machine detection. I didnt' even know it was going on, I've never seen it.

[tjohnson]

There are many posts on here about getting UEFI and your situation to work. You're not alone. I know very little about UEFI, except after first responding to your query I remembered working on a friends computer with UEFI and having it constantly reverting back to the original settings.

Can't speak to machine detection. I didnt' even know it was going on, I've never seen it.

Thanks, somehow I missed the similar posts before. I just found this one, which seems to be my exact problem, but doesn't mention a solution.

I was talking about the little OS and browser icons that show in the upper right corner of a post.

[tjohnson]

From searching on this forum some more, I saw that @PabloTwo had the same problem, and explained his solution here and at the link I mentioned in my previous post. I'll have to try it and see how it works for me.

[tjohnson]

Regrettably, @PabloTwo's solution doesn't work on my PC. When I try to set the BootNext value with efibootmgr, I get an error saying that permission is denied, even when I run it as root.
I also tried replacing bootx64.efi with grubx64.efi as I saw mentioned somewhere else, but that didn't fix the problem.
So, my problem remains unsolved.

[maddaemon]

Hi.

I've had exactly same problem. Windows 7, Fedora 19/20 and some UEFI BIOS (ASRock mobo). Everytime Windows booted, they made themselves default in BIOS boot menu. And when I changed the boot order in BIOS from BIOS to make Fedora default again, and saved it, the Windows boot entry completely disappeared! O_O

I would go without UEFI but the disk with space for Windows has GPT partition table and from what I read Windows 7 can't boot from GPT partitions when not running from UEFI... O_O

I didn't dual boot in some time so I didn't care about it. Just a me too post =).

[lightman47]

Minor reading today: THAT behaviour is exactly the design of UEFI. You'll need study and/or help to get around it.

[kkshethin]

I have similar problem. A HP laptop. Contacted HP. They are not in mood to listen or issue a bios update.

Finally i found a solution in form refind. After installing it in fedora, now windows behaves properly.

[tjohnson]

I got it working now!

I have similar problem. A HP laptop. Contacted HP. They are not in mood to listen or issue a bios update.

Finally i found a solution in form refind. After installing it in fedora, now windows behaves properly.

Thanks for mentioning rEFInd. That helped me find the solution to my problem, although I didn't need to install it.

I found these two links particularly helpful:

• http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-ref...-sanity-saver/
• http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/installing.html#naming

The important thing is to replace /EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi with grubx64.efi, which fools UEFI into thinking that the Windows bootloader is the default. I also moved the original bootmgfw.efi file (the Windows bootloader) up one directory, and updated the path to it in /EFI/fedora/grub.cfg so that GRUB can find Windows to boot it, and it finally worked.

[itpwrusr]

I bought a new HP i7 laptop running Windows 8.1 and loaded the f22 KDE spin as dual boot for my 10 year old son last Summer. He took it to Northwestern for a 3 week residential class on programming in Python and it ran a couple months after that. We had gone through one large upgrade of 500 programs, including the kernal, successfully. Then after apper told us about another kernal upgrade a few months ago, once completed upon reboot Grub failed. Win8 boots automatically. When I use <escape> key upon start-up and get to the startup menu for the PC I can sellect boot options and get to the UEFI Windows, UEFI Fedora, and EFI options. If I select UEFI Fedora a prompt comes up:

grub>

I really want to get the Linux side of this back up and running for my 5th grade son. He has been forced to use Windows October now and all of the Python and Java programming environments and projects he worked on last Summer are on Linux. I hate to reload LInux and don't know what was wrong with the kernal that caused it to crash Grub.

Please help.

Thanks,
Bret

[tjohnson]

I bought a new HP i7 laptop running Windows 8.1 and loaded the f22 KDE spin as dual boot for my 10 year old son last Summer. He took it to Northwestern for a 3 week residential class on programming in Python and it ran a couple months after that. We had gone through one large upgrade of 500 programs, including the kernal, successfully. Then after apper told us about another kernal upgrade a few months ago, once completed upon reboot Grub failed. Win8 boots automatically. When I use <escape> key upon start-up and get to the startup menu for the PC I can sellect boot options and get to the UEFI Windows, UEFI Fedora, and EFI options. If I select UEFI Fedora a prompt comes up:

grub>

I really want to get the Linux side of this back up and running for my 5th grade son. He has been forced to use Windows October now and all of the Python and Java programming environments and projects he worked on last Summer are on Linux. I hate to reload LInux and don't know what was wrong with the kernal that caused it to crash Grub.

Please help.

Thanks,
Bret

It sounds like the problem with your laptop isn't exactly the same as mine was, so I would recommend starting a new thread to get more help with your problem.

I'm not a Linux expert, so unfortunately I can't really help more than that. In case it's helpful, I did post a more detailed explanation of how I fixed my problem on Super User. Hope this helps.