Getting my new Win8 ASUS R701V to dual boot into Ubuntu 12.10 64-bit

So, my Christmas present to myself was a new gaming box, as my ASUS Netbook with only 1GB of RAM just wasn’t cutting it for some of the graphical and gaming stuff I wanted to explore. After shopping around, a great deal was found at MSY in Geelong (warning: worst website UX I’ve seen in a while).

My new baby is an ASUS R701V with 16GB of RAM, 2GB dedicated NVIDIA graphics and a Bang and Olufsen sound system. Noice. There is one downside however, in that it comes pre-shipped (mind your pronunciation) with Windows 8. Enter the whole UEFI secure boot debacle. This install wasn’t going to be as easy as downloading Wubi and rebooting…

Firstly, I sought advice from Matthew Garrett, recognised in the industry as a go-to person in this area. He kindly advised that I should use the 64-bit version of Ubuntu 12.10. So, I headed on over to the Ubuntu site and torrented down the 12.10 AMD 64-bit ISO (around 760MB).

Next, I used the tool from Pen Drive Linux to create a bootable USB stick (8GB SanDisk). I chose the ‘Ubuntu 12.10 Desktop’ option in the Pen Drive drop down, and used the ISO that had finished torrenting.
The next challenge was to figure out which key would let me into the BIOS settings on boot. Found this helpful page and identified ‘Insert’ as the ASUS BIOS key.
I was able to set the first boot device to the USB key. Interestingly, there weren’t any options to disable UEFI secure boot
I disabled the ‘fast boot’ setting
On boot, the grub menu loaded and I was able to choose from testing out Ubuntu, installing or exiting.
I tried each of these options, but the computer in all cases just hung with a blank screen, and didn’t do anything

My next attempt is going to be;

Redoing the USB stick to use ‘unlisted Linux’ - as the chosen ‘Ubuntu 12.10 Desktop’ might be specifically for 32-bit not 64-bit
Attempting to install again

UPDATE: Tried the following, but still the same symptoms;

Redid the USB stick using Pen Drive Linux to unlisted Linux - same symptoms
Burned the ISO to USB stick using dd as suggested by Jeremy - same symptoms

This means that it’s more likely that the issue is that the graphics driver as suggested by Eric - but I’m not sure how to work around it?

Thanks again everyone for your helpful advice. This just makes me more determined to make this machine dual bootable.

FURTHER UPDATE: My sh skills are rusty, here’s how I burnt it to USB stick using dd

reidk@ubuntu:~/Documents$ ls
ubuntu-12.10-desktop-amd64.iso
reidk@ubuntu:~/Documents$ dd if=ubuntu-12.10-desktop-amd64.iso of=/dev/sdb1 bs=1M
dd: opening `/dev/sdb1’: Permission denied
reidk@ubuntu:~/Documents$ sudo dd if=ubuntu-12.10-desktop-amd64.iso of=/dev/sdb1 bs=1M
[sudo] password for reidk:
Sorry, try again.
[sudo] password for reidk:
763+0 records in
763+0 records out
800063488 bytes (800 MB) copied, 50.7539 s, 15.8 MB/s

ANOTHER UPDATE: Tried manually editing the grub bootloading options as per this Ubuntu help article, using the nomodeset switch, but still the same symptoms…

</p>

MOAR UPDATE: Also tried the Wubi installer for 12.10 64 bit, and it errored on reboot and couldn’t find

wubildr.mbr
Also tried installing on different drives (C: and D:) but to no avail, still the same error.

</p>

10 comments

Comments are closed. These were left on the original WordPress blog.

Duncan Fenn · 5 January 2013

I think you’re going to have to load the windows 8 bootloader FIRST and then let the win8 bootloader find its own way into linux, rather than just completely removing the win8 bootloader/uefi..

http://superuser.com/questions/499617/how-can-i-add-linux-to-the-new-windows-8-boot-manager
Kathy Reid · 5 January 2013

Thanks for the tip Duncan - am going to try and see whether I can get grub working
captaincaple · 5 January 2013

@KathyReid hahaha Can you call a PDF a website ;)
skwashd · 5 January 2013

@KathyReid I tried getting an Win8 Acer desktop desktop to dual boot before xmas. It kept claiming Windows was damaged & wanted to reinstall
skwashd · 5 January 2013

@KathyReid In the end I created a recovery USB stick and then blew Windows away. Mother in law didn’t want Windows anyway.
ejstacey · 5 January 2013

@KathyReid the black screen is likely the Intel graphics. I’ve hit that issue a lot with Ubuntu and derivates. It sucks.
Jeremy Visser · 5 January 2013

I suspect half your trouble is your use of a third-party (likely non-UEFI-supporting) USB boot disk creator.

The Ubuntu .iso is, out-of-the-box, a hybrid ISO, MBR, and UEFI compatible image. Just do this:

# dd if=ubuntu-12.10-desktop-amd64.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=1M

(Yes, you can get dd for Windows, if you prefer to do it that way.)
jeremyvisser · 5 January 2013

@KathyReid See my blog comment. The .iso contains an MBR, El Torito boot block, *and* a UEFI bootloader if you dd it directly to the drive.
Krystal Biggs · 6 January 2013

Had a similar issue with Ubuntu and Windows 7, a service pack unfortunately overrode my grub2 bootloader, can’t quite recall if I had to reinstall Ubuntu at that stage :/
ejstacey · 6 January 2013

@KathyReid I said fuck Ubuntu (for that and other reasons) and went to something else.

Tags

10 comments