I’m trying to install on a new machine with Windows, and the LiveCD boots, but it doesn’t seem to see the keyboard or mouse. I can boot from Windows and another Linux drive, but when I boot from the LiveCD to do an installation, it just ignores me. Any ideas?
[Saturday-morning update]
OK, buy jiggering with the BIOS and UEFI settings, I managed to get it to boot. It says it installed Fedora on the drive that I shrunk the Windows partition. But when I reboot it without the USB key, I don’t get grub; it just boots into Windows. Now what?
[Update a while later]
OK, I don’t know why the BIOS wasn’t seeing it, or why I couldn’t add it, but Windows was seeing it. I forced Windows to load it on boot by editing the boot manager, so it seems to be working now.
[Update a while later]
OK, new problem. Grub is coming up now that I played around in Windows, but it’s making Fedora the default, which is a problem because I’m the only one who will be using it, and only a few times a year. I’ve read through all the instruction about changing it in Fedora, but they don’t show the Windows bootloader, and when I look at it in Windows, I don’t see anything except Windows, so I can’t change the order there, either.
[Update a few minutes later]
Success! I used this program to reconfigure grub, and although Linux is still at the top of the order, Windows now has an asterisk, and is the new default.
Things are a little vague. Are you trying to install Linux in either the whole drive or in a partition (or empty space) made by shrinking the Win partitions (there are a sh*tload) for a dual boot? Can any other live CDs boot and see the keyboard and mouse (e.g., Clonezilla, Parted Magic)? From my experience with an old HP laptop, it was important to enable proprietary drivers to get WiFi working, but I’ve never had a problem with keyboard or mouse. You are booting Fedora, correct? Have you tried booting a previous version? The drivers on the “latest and greatest” version might be the problem. The only other thing I can think of is that there is some new “wonder” setting in the EFI that needs magical powers to see the mouse and keyboard. You could try to enable legacy usb support and see if that helps.
I’m trying to install into a shrunk Windows 10 partition. I don’t have any other live CDs, but I can boot it from a Linux SSD that I use for our Windows laptop (I’m typing from that OS right now on the computer whose Windows partition I shrank). So it boots Fedora 36, but not the live CD of 37. I’ll try the legacy USB support thing.
Your problem is possibly that of grub being installed on the wrong partition, or that your BIOS doesn’t know where it is. You want grub to go onto the Fedora installation partition. Then you have to tickle your UEFI settings so that it knows about the EFI booting information with grub. I’ve done this on a couple of computers, and the BIOS settings are different in all of them so I can’t give you a definitive suggestion. You might look for a custom boot option and point it to the EFI directory with your installed grub. After that, you should always boot into grub, and then can choose between Linux and Win10. I find it useful to modify the grub configuration file so that it “remembers” the last boot and makes that the default partition foe the next boot. That way if you get an hour long Win10 update and restart, it will automatically reboot to Win without you having to stare at the swirling circle.
Hopefully, when grub is installed, it will do a scan of all bootable partitions, so it will know about the Win10 partition.
I would assume that grub was installed on the linux partition; I can’t imagine where else it would have put it. I don’t see any obvious way to “tickle” the UEFI settings, and I’ve looked several times. The BIOS definitely does not see it.
At least in Ubuntu, you have the option to put grub wherever you want. It involves putting it in a fat32 partition, within an EFI directory structure. It has to be fat32 because it has to be bootable from a UEFI bios. Win10 boots from just such a partition. It also has a lot of other crap, like a recovery partition; you need to make sure Win can still “see” that partition as recovery. There are instructions online, that usually involve Powershell in Win10.
When you get into the bios via the Win10 settings/advanced/restart dance, what options does it give you for booting? Does it “see” the Fedora partition as an option (it would actually be the EFI entry in a fat32 partition). Running gparted or disks from a liveCD linux, such as Parted Magic will tell you a lot about what has actually been installed. It’s quite possible that Fedora “helpfully” put its grub entry in the Win10 fat32 partition. I’ve found that to be a pretty lousy way of doing things. If it’s there (visible in Powershell, or from any Linux) you might have to edit out the settings within Win10. This can be tricky.
Before doing anything, especially surgery on the Win10 partitions, I’d save a Clonezilla disk images. That’s saved my bacon many times.
I would look in the BIOS for boot order and or boot options. See what’s available. You are looking for an option that let’s you boot from the fat32 EFI entry created for grub and Fedora. On one of my computers (an old HP), it allowed for a “custom boot” that let me specify a partition and EFI entry. Then I could change the order for booting. I put the grub partition ahead of the Win boot manager, et voila.
I would also not do a default option install for Linux in a dual boot. It will likely screw up. There are lots of youtube videos showing the steps you need to go through.
I need to revise my last post. My dual boot on the computer I’m posting this from has grub and the EFI entry for it in sda1, which is the boot fat32 partition that also has the Win10 boot manager. All this shows up in /boot/efi from within Linux. There is a microsoft directory for the Win10 EFI boot manager, and there’s an ubuntu entry, which really points to grub. I got confused because I had earlier had to convert a legacy boot computer to UEFI, which was pretty hair raising!
It’s good that you seemed to have sorted out the problem. However, does this mean that you always start with Win10 boot manager, and then have to go to grub? I’ve been able to get the UEFI firmware to choose grub first, but your UEFI firmware may not be up to the job.