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user435118
4:39 PM
@Makyen
 
Yes.
 
user435118
Hi
 
user435118
I'm having some trouble booting from a USB drive
 
user435118
 
user435118
First of all, which one is it?
 
user435118
4:42 PM
I only have 1 USB plugged in
 
user435118
And it doesn't have any of those names
 
@Daniil Unplug it. Reboot and get to the same screen. The one that's missing is the one that it was.
 
user435118
When do I plug it in?
 
user435118
Just before reboot?
 
@Daniil If you're wanting to see which one disappears, then you don't plug it in. If you are wanting to boot from it, then it should be plugged in basically from the time you turn the machine on. It will work if plugged in at points after that, but when the latest point is will depend on your BIOS, so the only assured answer to that is that it should be plugged in when you turn the machine on.
If you know which device it's displayed as, then you can experiment as to when you can plug it it. It could be the list is dynamic and you could plug it in while viewing the list. OTOH, it may not be.
 
user435118
4:49 PM
Huh, I unplugged it and the options are the same
 
@Daniil Did you previously have it plugged in from the time you turned the machine on?
 
user435118
Oooh, a new option appeared in the boot menu
 
user435118
Network Boot, don't think it's that
 
user435118
@Makyen yeah
 
user435118
I am accessing this menu by going to settings, recovery, advanced startup (if that makes a difference)
 
4:54 PM
@Daniil Then your system may not be recognizing that it is bootable, or the device in general. That may be a problem with your machine, the USB device, a USB hub you are plugging the device into, your BIOS, the BIOS settings, or how you created the USB device (the last is probably the most likely). The most likely thing to do is determine if you created the USB device/image in a way that the machine will recognize is bootable, given its current settings.
 
user435118
It's labelled as UUI...
 
user435118
I'll try and extract the ISO to the USB again
 
user435118
Now I've broken the USB completely...
 
5:09 PM
@Daniil You're going to need to decide if you want to use UEFI booting on your machine, or not. There will be a BIOS setting for it, which probably will list something like "legacy" as the alternative. Your USB device will need to be formatted/created explicitly for one or the other. In particular, if you are using UFEI, which appears to be your current setting and is the default for newer machines, then whatever process you used to create the USB should explicitly state that it works for UFEI.
 
user435118
I changed to legacy
 
user435118
I'll check the tool I use
 
user435118
Um... not sure
 
user435118
Tried again and the USB still isn't there
 
user435118
5:21 PM
@Makyen When using the tool, there is an option to NTFS format or Fat32 format. None of those are ticked. Do I need to tick one of them?
 
@Daniil Potentially. I'm not familiar with that tool. In general, if you're creating a USB boot device, then you'll probably want to format it, unless there's stuff on the USB which you're wanting to keep. The image you use may, or may not, need to be compatible with UEFI/legacy.
Basically, I'd suggest looking for questions on Ask Ubuntu about creating a bootable install USB device. Someone's going to be able to go into more detail in an answer than I am going to be able to here in chat.
 
user435118
I'll ask a Q there
 
@Daniil It's nearly certain there are a variety of existing questions which already cover installing Ubuntu and/or creating bootable install media on a USB device. You'd probably be better off searching a bit first.
 
user435118
5:48 PM
room topic changed to Room for Daniil and Makyen: (no tags)
 
user435118
room parent site changed to default (no parent site)
 
user435118
6:27 PM
@Makyen I managed to get to the install screen
 
\o/
 
user435118
 
user435118
No idea what I pressed to get here but what about that? ^
 
Well, I'd figure out which device /dev/sdb is and what is mounted prior to making a decision. Personally, I'd open a terminal and investigate, but there might be a GUI method of doing so. However, I'm much more familiar with the linux/unix command line than the various GUI programs that are available in different windowing systems/OS releases. I'd probably start with just a mount command and/or df.
 
user435118
 
user435118
6:38 PM
@Makyen ^
 
user435118
So am I like on a dummy Ubuntu right now considering I haven't installed it?
 
@Daniil It takes time to learn anything.
 
user435118
I managed to skip that and now it's asking where to install
 
user435118
Install on /dev/sda?
 
user435118
And boot loader also at /dev/sda?
 
6:41 PM
@Daniil Based on that, it looks like /dev/sdb is the device containing your boot image/install media, so, no, you don't want to unmount it.
 
user435118
Ok
 
user435118
> Install on /dev/sda?
 
@Daniil Possibly yes to both, but given that it's going overwrite whatever is already there, I'd make doubly sure that's where you want to have your Ubuntu system. Have you already installed Windows? If so, then the answer is probably no.
I'd definitely at least do a fdisk -l /dev/sda prior to making a choice. You may need that to be sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda
 
user435118
7:00 PM
Yes, Windows is already running
 
user435118
fdisk -l /dev/sda:
 
user435118
EFI System, Microsoft Reserved, Microsoft Basic Data *2, Windows recovery envirnment *2, Lenovo boot partition
 
user435118
@Makyen Do I want that ^?
 
user435118
Oh no that's my USB Drive
 
user435118
Oh cool, I removed the USB and broke it
 
7:07 PM
@Daniil Yeah, that would probably not be good. :;
 
user435118
Yeah, I managed to get back to booting it
 
user435118
@Makyen So where do I want to install it?
 
user435118
I have somewhere called 'free space', there?
 
@Daniil Somewhere you're going to need space for your Ubuntu system partition (and potentially other partitions too). If you have a single drive on this machine, then that's likely going to need to be /dev/sda, but you will need to take care in how you are allocating space so that you are not overwriting what's already there.
If you just went with the defaults when installing Windows, then it's quite likely that Windows consumed the entirety of /dev/sda when it created a partition for itself. If so, you'll need to use some software which allows you to shrink that partition in order to have space on the device for your Ubuntu partition. If it's a fresh install of Windows which you don't mind overwriting, it may be easier to start from scratch with a plan for the partitions.
The output from fdisk -l /dev/sda should have had more detail, which should show if there is more unallocated space on the device.
When setting up dual booting, I usually don't just trust that the tools will get the partitioning correct, so do it manually, but they probably do a reasonable job at this point.
 
user435118
I have somewhere called 'free space' with 200GB
 
user435118
7:16 PM
@Makyen I'm not sure, I installed Windows a few years ago
 
@Daniil OK. That's a good sign that this may be on the easier end of the spectrum, but "somewhere" doesn't really narrow it down enough to be sure of what's going on.
 
user435118
My partitions before installing Ubuntu
 
user435118
 
user435118
I have no clue as to what I'm doing
 
user435118
I'm going to exit the Ubuntu install, what should I check in Windows? @Makyen
 
user435118
7:23 PM
Nvm I think I got it
 
user435118
I am installing
 
@Daniil You appear to have two disks. Your first one appears to be completely allocated to Windows. Your second one could have almost anything on it, but I'd guess that it was a removable drive of some sort. Are you intending to install your additional OS on the second drive?
 
user435118
The second disk is the USB I'm installing from
 
user435118
I am intending to install on the first
 
user435118
It's copying files
 
user435118
7:31 PM
I probably broke something
 
Maybe not. It might have the capability to install within an image file on your original Windows partition.
 
user435118
I have free space on disk 0 though
 
user435118
200GB+
 
user435118
I'm off
 
user435118
I'll let you know how it goes later
 
user435118
7:35 PM
Thanks for the help, bye!
 
@Daniil I assume you mean that you have 200GB+ of free space within your Windows partition. That's different than having 200GB of unallocated space on the drive.
@Daniil OK. I'd be interested to hear what happens.
o/
 
 
2 hours later…
user435118
9:40 PM
@Makyen It installed and said to do a restart, It’s been stuck on this for 15 min:
 
user435118
 
user435118
Should I force shut it down with the power button?
 
:54578443 That may indicate you should try rebooting without your USB device installed, but implies larger problems, unless it failed in shutting down prior to the reboot.
@Daniil That looks like what's needed at this point. It probably won't make things worse.
 
user435118
10:08 PM
Ubuntu boots fine
 
user435118
Windows broke
 
user435118
Boot options:
 
user435118
 
user435118
When selecting windows recovery:
 
user435118
 
user435118
10:10 PM
What should I do? @Makyen
 
@Daniil I'd boot your USB drive and see what happened to the partitions.
 
user435118
10:28 PM
@Makyen What USB drive? The one with Linux or the one with the backups?
 
@Daniil The one with Linux. I would have assumed the (previously unmentioned) backups aren't bootable.
 
user435118
So let me get this straight. I have my laptop which I want both Windows and Linux on. Linux works but Windows doesn’t. I have a USB drive with a bootable version of Linux (the USB I had issues with earlier) and a USB hard drive with disc images of my old Windows data in case a restore is needed
 
user435118
So what should I do?
 
user435118
@Makyen ^
 
user435118
 
10:42 PM
When you were installing Ubuntu, did it mention that it was resizing a partition?
@Daniil If the Windows logical drive (i.e. the Windows partition) has not been corrupted, now you need to tell Grub to add the primary Windows partition to the list which it offers as an option to boot into.
 
user435118
10:55 PM
@Makyen No, it didn’t
 
@Daniil There was plenty of free space on the partition which was resized, so it's possible everything is fine.
 
user435118
 
user435118
The Windows data is on sda3, right?
 
user435118
11:12 PM
@Makyen ^
 
@Daniil Looks that way.
@Daniil Looks like it should work.
@Daniil If it doesn't work, then the other answers on that question have promise.
 

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