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I have Windows 8.1 on my Lenovo G500 laptop and I want to install Lubuntu allongside (dual boot). Windows boot in UEFI.

My problem is that after booting from the CD and choosing any of the options (Install, Command-line install, Expert install, ...), I always get the same screen: it is completely illegible, like squeezed vertically, I can see some orange color - probably the highlighted line in a list, I can move it, I can press Enter and get further - god knows where). Strange that I get this also when I choose Command-line mode...

I tried pressing E, that didn't do anything.

Installation in Legacy mode seemed to work, but I need UEFI since I already have there Win8 in UEFI mode.

tuxtu
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galapah
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1 Answers1

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If you've done an EFI-mode installation, then 99.9% of the software you need is installed; the only thing left is a boot loader. Ordinarily, using Boot Repair might help; but with an existing Windows installation, you really need to run Boot Repair in EFI mode, which isn't working for you (from the installation medium, anyhow). Therefore, I suggest you try this:

  1. If you haven't done so already, disable Secure Boot in your firmware.
  2. Download the USB flash drive or CD-R version of my rEFInd boot manager.
  3. Create a USB flash drive or CD-R that holds rEFInd.
  4. Boot to the rEFInd medium. It should show you entries for both Windows and Ubuntu. Test both of them. If they both work, proceed. If the Ubuntu entry doesn't work, you may want to put off the rest of this procedure until you can fix the problem.
  5. Boot to Ubuntu.
  6. Install an EFI boot loader. Two options are likely to be relatively easy:
    • Install the rEFInd Debian package or PPA. Since rEFInd works from the USB drive, it's almost certain to work when installed to your hard disk.
    • Install the grub-efi package, which will replace the grub-pc package. You'll then need to run sudo grub-install and probably sudo update-grub to get a working configuration. Note that this is a bit of a gamble, though; because you didn't boot with GRUB, you can't really be sure it will work. You might run into the same video problems you experienced with the installation medium, or something else. OTOH, it might be fine.
  7. If desired, re-enable Secure Boot in the firmware. (Depending on how you installed, you might need to install Shim before re-enabling Secure Boot. If you re-enable Secure Boot and the system stops booting, disable it and install Shim.)
  8. You may need to adjust your firmware options to disable the BIOS/CSM/legacy boot support.

If you run into the same video problems with rEFInd that you have with the Ubuntu installation disc, you can try playing with kernel options. If you see a clear GRUB menu in the installer, you can hit e to edit the entry and change kernel options. In rEFInd, highlight the kernel you want to boot and hit F2 or Insert twice. The result will be a text editor with which you can edit the kernel options. In either case, try nomodeset as an added option. There are probably other options you can try, but they're mostly chipset-specific. Your laptop has an Intel video chipset, according to Lenovo's Web site, but I don't know offhand what options you might try with it. (Video problems such as the one you're having seem to be more common with Nvidia and AMD/ATI chipsets.)

Rod Smith
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