Unsolved
This post is more than 5 years old
7 Posts
0
15164
Alienware 17 R4 Windows 10 and Ubuntu dual boot?
I recently got a 17 R4 with gf 1070, 512GB nvme boot drive + 1TB HDD and I'm on a quest to dual boot the factory Windows 10 and Ubuntu 16.04LTS desktop. I added a Samsung 512GB nvme ssd to act as the drive for the Ubuntu installation, while preserving the original nvme drive as Windows 10 (the 1TB hdd acts as a data drive...no plans for OS there). The relevant default bios settings are UEFI boot with Secure Boot enabled and drive subsystem set to RAID.
Now, from experimentation, it's apparent Ubuntu installer can not see the nvme drives when the bios is set to RAID. This was expected and setting it to AHCI resolved that problem, however, when trying to boot back into Win10, it refuses to boot with the "INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE" error.
So, as my first hurdle, how do I get Windows 10 to boot when bios is set to AHCI?
THX
Tesla1856
8 Wizard
8 Wizard
•
17K Posts
0
January 21st, 2017 11:00
Try this ...
If Intel-RST is currently installed, just uninstall it (the front-end app) and reboot once back to Windows.
Then, in BIOS ... Change RAID to AHCI and reboot. Visit SafeMode (if required to PnP new driver). ShutDown and then boot normally. Should be done.
pj1967
7 Posts
0
January 21st, 2017 15:00
I found this which worked perfectly....
"Get Windows to boot on AHCI mode (SATA options)"
github.com/.../alienware15r3_ubuntu14
Now I just have to figure out how to add Ubuntu to the Windows 10 UEFI boot menu
PinballSorceror
12 Posts
0
January 24th, 2017 07:00
Hey, I'm following in your footsteps- when I switch from RAID to AHCI I get an error when it boots; it can't find a boot device. I haven't added a second drive yet so I don't understand how it could have a RAID depedency; I only have the SSD and the platter drives- those two aren't raided as they are very different speeds and capacities and list as completely different disks. Did you have to reinstall windows after going to AHCI?
pj1967
7 Posts
0
January 24th, 2017 09:00
While still in RAID BIOS mode.....boot into Windows then follow the "Get Windows to boot on AHCI mode (SATA options)" in the link I posted. That worked for me.
PinballSorceror
12 Posts
0
January 25th, 2017 07:00
That worked for me as well, thanks. So I'm just waiting for a new NVME drive to be delivered and I'll set about getting a dual boot working.
pj1967
7 Posts
0
March 11th, 2017 15:00
Been a while but here's a followup in case anyone cares...
Turns out installing Ubuntu is surprisingly easy and I don't know why I made it more complicated than it is, but the process is as follows:
1) Build a USB key with the Ubuntu 16.04 image (desktop version in my case)
2) Boot off the USB image, pick install Ubuntu option
3) The "gumstick" NVME drives will be detected and presented as /dev/nvme[#]n1, where [#] = integer starting at 0. Partitions (if existing) appear as /dev/nvme[#]n1p[#]. On my laptop, Windows 10 is on the /dev/nvme1n1 device, whereas my target drive for Ubuntu is /dev/nvme0n1. Yours may be different depending on your drives orientation, but just be careful.
4) Make sure to create an EFI partition of at least 100MB (I make mine 200MB). This is distinct from /boot and is necessary for Ubuntu to boot in conjunction with UEFI and secure boot. I made my EFI partition the first partition on the disk.
5) Create your /, /home, or whatever combination you like.
6) Follow the installer through to finish.
Interestingly enough, the UEFI "bios" will auto detect the presence of the ubuntu installation and populate it in the boot list when you hit F12 during boot. I don't know why that auto detect surprised me, but count me as a UEFI noob. Conversely, if you wipe out the Ubuntu installation, UEFI bios will auto remove ubuntu from the boot list. Pretty cool feature.
Ok, so, now I have Windows 10 on one gumstick drive and Ubuntu on a separate gumstick drive... both independently bootable...with a nice fat 2TB mag drive as a "sharable" drive. Except.....Ubuntu is horribly unstable on the AW 17 R4 :-( Unity WM locks up hard requiring a power cycle with the power button. Interestingly, I can remote ssh into the laptop and even if the Unity GUI locks up, my ssh session isn't toast....indicating that it doesn't kernel panic. But, ssh sessions do lock up on their own, especially when attempting to install packages (like the nVidia drivers.) syslog reports problems with the nouveau driver, so I suspect Ubuntu will be unstable until some update can be made to the nouveau driver.
gnulu
1 Message
0
March 15th, 2017 20:00
did you try using the nvidia driver?
Appreciate this string as I just purchased an alienware 17 r4 and i'm also attempting to install ubuntu. how did you select your second nvme m.2 228 ssd? It was pulling teeth from dell to get specs on anything compatible. They repeated over and over again, samsung evo was not compatible but offered no alerternatives.
pj1967
7 Posts
0
March 20th, 2017 14:00
Hey, sorry for the late reply...looks like the forum has been cosmetically changed...
I chose the Samsung 950 Pro and had no problems with the EFI bios or Ubuntu "seeing" it.
I did try to install the nVidia driver but any sort of "complex" command...like apt-get or similar...locks up the bash and ssh session. I do have syslog dumps of nouveau driver crashes so I suppose I can post them to the relevant forums.