I recently bought a new used Lenovo V570 laptop and wanted to dual boot it with windows 7 and Ubuntu 14.05. I found the drive had been erased with the exception of a recovery partition, but I was unable to access it.
Step 1:
I tried using the original format which was msdos and installed a fresh Windows 7. Unfortunately that failed. The Windows disk required GPT.
Step 2:
Booted live Linux change to GPT and create partitions. installed Windows 7, then installed Ubuntu 14.04. Ubuntu 14.04 installed ok until reboot, then it only showed Windows 7 with no way to get to other operating systems. I checked boot order and checked boot options and tested Windows boot loader option with no luck. Checked Google for a solutin and updated the Bios. Reinstalled failed.
Step 3:
Per one of the forums, I found a recomendation to install as msdos, create the partitions and install Ubuntu 14.04 to rear of HDD, then install Windows 7 from a usb drive (Microsoft has a free downloadable tool to convert a ISO or DVD to a usb) I then use grub rescue to reinstal grub 2. I did find that Windows would install to msdos with no errors of GPT not found.But grub rescue did not work. Using wmacks guide below, I was able to restore grub 2 and make everything work.
Final thoughts:
As shown by wmack’s blog below each UEFI is different and there is no standard way to do anything. I may retry with GPT in order to understand better how it works.
usb tool info at
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/html/pbPage.Help_Win7_usbdvd_dwnTool
