HP Pavilion G6-2313AX dual booting Ubuntu 12.10 and Windows 8

Here is my experience with HP Pavilion g6-2313AX with Windows 8 and Ubuntu 12.10 dual boot.

Before starting Installtion:

Get Windows 8 DVD with key and Ubuntu DVD for installation.

Installing Windows 8:

Installing Windows 8 is easy. While installing Windows 8, leave lot of free space for installing Ubuntu later. Windows will create 4 partition i.e sda1 , sda2, sda3, sda4. I gave only 100 GB for Windows 8 to live in my notebook.

Ubuntu recommends that EFI boot partition should be 200 MB and Windows 8 create EFI partition only of 100 MB. So first I installed Windows 8 and then Ubuntu. Windows 8 create only 100 MB EFI partition so I stopped the installation of Windows 8 in the middle and used Live Ubuntu from pen drive to boot and open GParted. Deleted every partition except sda1 and sda2.  Now change the size of EFI partition to 400 MB.

If for some reason GParted fails than use Ubuntu installer to resize the EFI partition. When using Ubuntu installer do not delete sda1(Windows recovery) and create EFI partition of 200 MB and continue with installation and cancel Ubuntu installation after disk formatting stage has done. Now go to Windows 8 partition. Delete every partition except sda1 and sad2. Format(not delete) the sda1 and sda2 with Windows 8 to clear any old entries for fresh install and creat 100 GB partition using Windows 8 partitioning system. Windows 8 will automatically create sda3 and sda4. Windows create sda3 - 128 MiB partition automatically while installation. Windows 8 will install successfully. Now with UEFI only Windows 8 boot by default.

HP Pavilion g6-2313AX has secure boot and I have disabled the legacy support from BIOS to avaoid any future problem while dual booting Windows 8 and Ubuntu 12.10. For it I used the GParted for partitioning the 1 TB hard disk drive.

Windows 8 and Ubuntu dual boot with UEFI  disk partition scheme. 

• /dev/sda1 is windows recovery partition.
• /dev/sda2 is EFI boot partition.
• /dev/sda3 is Windows 8 system drive automatically created by Windows while installation.
• /dev/sda4 is the NTFS partition where Windows 8 is installed.
• /dev/sda5 is ext4 and Ubuntu is installed in this drive.
• /dev/sda6 is swap partition for Ubuntu.
• /dev/sda7 is the ext4 partition and its mount point is /home.

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Installing Ubuntu:

Boot from Ubuntu DVD or Ubuntu pen drive. Click Next ,next.... and then there is partition manager asking to to use whole disk. Choose "Something else". Now you will see windows drive and some free space. Do not touch any of the windows drives from sda1 to sda4. Make new partition for Ubuntu and choose right mount point. Don't forget to leave some space for Linux Swap. Ubuntu will go inside drive which has mount point "/" i.e sda5 here. Now continue with installation.
New partition created during Ubuntu installation:

• /dev/sda5 is ext4 and Ubuntu is installed in this drive.
• /dev/sda6 is swap partition for Ubuntu.
• /dev/sda7 is the ext4 partition and its mount point is /home.

When the installation of Ubuntu finishes it will ask for restart. But after restart, the OS that boot is Windows 8.  So to boot Ubuntu go to boot option by pressing escape key just after power button is pressed and press F9 key to see boot option. Ubuntu should be there as second option.

Missing old GRUB Menu On Start-up:

Install GRUB to see a list of Operating System to choose from for boot. For this install Boot Repair in Ubuntu with this command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair && boot-repair

After this click Recommended Repair option or advance if you want. Follow the instructions. On reboot you will see old GRUB menu. Windows may fail to boot so disable secure boot from BIOS.

HP Pavilion G6-2313AX with Windows 8 and drivers.

HP Pavilion G6-2313AX with Ubuntu 12.10