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My goal is to have Windows 8 and Debian Stable installed on my work laptop in a dualboot setup. My setup is:

  • OS: Windows 8.1 Enterprise N
  • Laptop model: HP EliteBook 850 G1 (no secure boot)
  • Disk: 170 GB SSD, with partitions stored in MBR

The partitions look like this: enter image description here

The first partition I don't know what is and I'm not sure if installing GRUB would overwrite or destroy something valuable in here that Windows need.

The unallocated partition at the end of the disk should contain a Debian install, perhaps by creating separate logical partitions inside an extended one, and the bootloader should be GRUB2 with Windows 8 in the list.

I have prepared the following things:

  • Bootable USB drive with a Debian Stable installer
  • Bootable USB drive with Windows 8 recovery tools made using this Windows 8 installation

How should I proceed with installing Debian without loosing Windows?

2 Answers 2

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You an fire up the debian installer from the USB while booting up the system. In the partitioner, move to the now free/unused space on the SSD, and use the assisted partitioner for all unused free space. Going with the recommended option (all data on same partition) is fine. You will then get /dev/sdb[...] and /dev/sdb[...] partitions for general use and swap.

Note that sda might be assigned to USB

The last step is to install the GRUB boot loader. Now, this can be done different ways. The easiest is to just follow the suggestion to install GRUB to the Master Boot Record. This will overwrite Windows boot loader. You an always get back the windows bootloader from the recovery USB that you made.

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  • I solved it by doing something like this. The SYSTEM partition contains the Windows boot loader, so it shouldn't be touched. GRUB is installed to the first partition created by the Debian installer and setup to chainload the Windows bootloader.
    – user111228
    Jan 17, 2014 at 11:40
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You may need a recovery tool after the Debian install, so you might as well prepare it beforehand: download Ubuntu, and burn it to a USB stick.

Now install Debian with your installer. After you are done, reboot. Your system may or may not reboot correctly. If it does, fine. If it does not, reboot from the Ubuntu stick, choose Try Ubuntu without installing it, open a terminal, download BootRepair as detailed here, follow those standard instructions which are generally sufficient to solve all problems.

When you boot from the Ubuntu stick, you will have a network connection, so you can read the Boot Repair installation and operation instructions online, as you fix your system, no need to save beforehand. Also, if you are wondering why I did not suggest to download BootRepair earlier, it is because live distributions like Ubuntu's do not keep a copy of what you install: in other words, after installing Boot-Repair, if you turn the system off, the install of Boot-Repair on the USB stick will vanish. So you need to do it on the fly.

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