First of all, I know this issue has been much discussed, but I have read and tried everything I can find so far with no relief. Any help would be very much appreciated.
I haven't been able to dual-boot since downgrading to 18.04.4. I had been running 19.10 in dual-boot with Win 7 with no problems for some months (I upgraded from 18.04 last Nov). I began to have stability issues after some recent update (after Feb 2) or bone-headed move on my part (dunno) and, finding no obvious issue in the OS (other than cupsd running wild on memory - another story) or hardware, I decided to try downgrading; that's when the real fun started.
First I couldn't boot at all (error: file '/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod' not found). The help I found on this indicated I needed an EFI partiion, so I re-partitioned and re-installed using the "something else" option, creating an EFI partition at the beginning of the ssd (there was a 100 MB partition there that MAY have been left over from a previous install). I got this to work, but then I had no dual-boot option.
Commands sudo os-prober;sudo update-grub don't help and neither does Grub Customizer. I tried everything I could find in the Ubuntu forums and AskUbuntu.
Boot Repair also failed to help.
Then I find this advice from OldFred (https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2320894):
I've done this (deleting the EFI partition in the process) and now I at least get a grub menu, but still no Win7 option.
Current Boot Repair info at: http://paste.ubuntu.com/p/cNVWq34r6N/. I am not running UEFI mode from BIOS ("Other OS" option on boot) and all the disks are MBR.
Note, I have all the OS files (Win and Linux) on the sda device (ssd). I also have 3 hard disks used for bulk storage and backup (as sdb,-c and -d). System is Asus M5A97 R2.0 with AMD FX6350 and 7850 (Pitcairn) graphics. Nothing exciting there.
Thanks very much for any help you can give.
I haven't been able to dual-boot since downgrading to 18.04.4. I had been running 19.10 in dual-boot with Win 7 with no problems for some months (I upgraded from 18.04 last Nov). I began to have stability issues after some recent update (after Feb 2) or bone-headed move on my part (dunno) and, finding no obvious issue in the OS (other than cupsd running wild on memory - another story) or hardware, I decided to try downgrading; that's when the real fun started.
First I couldn't boot at all (error: file '/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod' not found). The help I found on this indicated I needed an EFI partiion, so I re-partitioned and re-installed using the "something else" option, creating an EFI partition at the beginning of the ssd (there was a 100 MB partition there that MAY have been left over from a previous install). I got this to work, but then I had no dual-boot option.
Commands sudo os-prober;sudo update-grub don't help and neither does Grub Customizer. I tried everything I could find in the Ubuntu forums and AskUbuntu.
Boot Repair also failed to help.
Then I find this advice from OldFred (https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2320894):
You have to convert Ubuntu from UEFI to BIOS to dual boot. (or reinstall Windows in UEFI mode).
Add a 1 or 2MB unformatted partition anywhere on sdc with gparted and add the bios_grub flag.
Then use Boot-Repair's advanced mode to un-install/reinstall grub. You want it to uninstall the UEFI version grub-efi-amd64 and install grub-pc for BIOS boot.
Do not run any auto fix in Boot-Repair.
Add a 1 or 2MB unformatted partition anywhere on sdc with gparted and add the bios_grub flag.
Then use Boot-Repair's advanced mode to un-install/reinstall grub. You want it to uninstall the UEFI version grub-efi-amd64 and install grub-pc for BIOS boot.
Do not run any auto fix in Boot-Repair.
I've done this (deleting the EFI partition in the process) and now I at least get a grub menu, but still no Win7 option.
Current Boot Repair info at: http://paste.ubuntu.com/p/cNVWq34r6N/. I am not running UEFI mode from BIOS ("Other OS" option on boot) and all the disks are MBR.
Note, I have all the OS files (Win and Linux) on the sda device (ssd). I also have 3 hard disks used for bulk storage and backup (as sdb,-c and -d). System is Asus M5A97 R2.0 with AMD FX6350 and 7850 (Pitcairn) graphics. Nothing exciting there.
Thanks very much for any help you can give.