Friday, October 19, 2018

system installation - Install Ubuntu on UEFI without Windows or Boot Loader


I have a Gateway netbook that has already been fully wiped with nothing on the hard drive. There is no Legacy option in bios and the only thing I can boot from the USB is a Gparted disk utilizing Grub/EFI loader in which I can partition the drive. But nothing else will boot from USB including Boot Repair, ReFINd, multiple Linux Live CDs, or Super Grub disks. Ubuntu installation disks won't show up, there is no boot loader on the hard drive and I don't know how to get anything installed. It seems to be a UEFI motherboard PC without a bios boot option. All the articles I am coming across deal with dual boots on EFI, or Windows 8 machines. Mine was a Windows 8 preinstalled machine that no longer has Windows on it. Any guidance on installing a boot loader and Ubuntu would be much appreciated.



I ended up solving this issue. I found out that even though the netbook was a newer model it was actually 32 bit. Therefore none of the 64 bit disk images would boot because they only contained 64 bit EFI drivers. I ended up...



  1. Downloading a 32 bit version of Linux Mint (which didn't have EFI support).

  2. I took the EFI folder from Gparted boot disk (which also had 32 bit EFI drivers) and copied it to the Linux Mint USB. This explains why only the Gparted disk would boot when others wouldn't.


Booted instantly, installed successfully, and is running like a charm. Loving Linux Mint 17!!!


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