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Not a duplicate - this is a new, sub-question regarding the steps in the answer here: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/375863/4018

I followed the steps in that question, however, after completing them, selecting the Windows drive on the standard mac boot menu no longer works, what happens is that the screen goes blank and it never boots into Windows.

Also, there is not option shown in the apple boot manager for Ubuntu - video to follow.

Possible lead to explore: instead of step 6 using mv Linux command to rename the Windows EFI folders - to stop GRUB altering it, make a copy - cp -R EFI EFI.win, for later to restore back at end of steps, instead. My theory is that macOS bootmanager doesn't find Windows on a subsequent reboot after I did step 6, it adjusts itself to ignore it. By having the original there, it wont do that - AND - at the end we can restore the copy, overwriting what GRUB did. I haven't tried this yet. I also haven't tried bootrec yet.

I don't know how, yet, to solve the other problem whereby the option for booting into Ubuntu is not shown in the Apple boot manager.

Machine: 2016 MacBookPro 15" touchbar, 2.9GHz Quad-Core Intel i7, AMD 4g graphics, 16Gb RAM, 1Tb SSD.

Running: macOS Catalina 10.15.2

Windows 10 Pro 64bit installed OK with BootCamp

Attempting to install 3rd operating system, Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS 64bit, to be an option along side macOS and Windows in the standard Apple Boot Manager boot selection screen. DO NOT want to use reFind.

Here are my screenshots of some of the key steps I followed in that answer (from above):

Differences in my setup:

  • that my partition name identifiers are different from the original question, but I believe I've worked out the equivalents for my case

  • My Bootcamp Windows has only one (1) partition, unlike the (answer mentioned above) which has three partitions.

Screenshots from step 6

step 06 step 06 step 06 step 06 step 06 step 06

steps 08-13

steps 08-13 steps 08-13 steps 08-13 steps 08-13 steps 08-13 steps 08-13 steps 08-13 steps 08-13 steps 08-13 steps 08-13

steps 15,16

steps 15,16 steps 15,16 steps 15,16

Step 16

step 16

Step 17

step 17

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  • In the end, I stuck with dual boot macOS and Windows. I'm so appreciative of the efforts of folks to get a triple boot setup. The reason I abandoned this is because it necessarily had a lot of steps to go through as well as drivers to install for trackpad/touchpad etc, alpha at time. Also WSL2 works well for Linux on Windows - officially supported and ddev for php (Drupal) development. WSL2 seems to perform as well as, if not better in terms of speed on Windows, compare with using docker on mac. YMMV. I wanted to develop rather than develop my development environment.
    – therobyouknow
    Commented Dec 10, 2021 at 10:16
  • See my comment about a new development whereby Linux can be installed on the NTFS filesystem, potential to simplify "triple" boot: apple.stackexchange.com/questions/378754/…
    – therobyouknow
    Commented Dec 10, 2021 at 10:47

2 Answers 2

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Possible Reason Windows Will Not Boot

The Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS 64 bit installation software changes the Master Boot Record (MBR) partition table on the installation drive to cause hybrid partitioning. This would prevent Windows from booting on 2016 model year Macs. In 2012, Apple started to phase out the need for hybrid partitioning. Evidently, the Ubuntu installer does not check for this. The answer you reference has been changed to add a step where gdisk is used to remove any hybrid partitioning imposed by the Ubuntu installer on the installation drive.

You can also remove the hybrid partitioning by booting to the live version of Ubuntu from the installer flash drive. The steps are given below.

  1. Download the latest Ubuntu installation ISO file from the Ubuntu Home Page. The file download and used in this answer was named ubuntu-18.04.3-desktop-amd64.iso.

  2. Use Etcher to create a bootable Ubuntu flash drive installer, then boot from this flash drive. A tutorial can be found at the Ubuntu website Create a bootable USB stick on macOS.

  3. When the menu below appears, select Try Ubuntu without installing.

  4. When the Ubuntu desktop appears, press the control+option+T key combination to open a terminal window.

  5. Make sure the drive is not using hybrid partitioning. This can be accomplished by entering the command given below.

    sudo gdisk /dev/nvme0n1p

    This command is interactive. The interactive commands you will need to enter when prompted by gdisk are given below.

    x
n
w
y

  6. Finally, enter the command exit to close the terminal window.

Possible Reason Ubuntu Will Not Boot

Below is a copy of an image you posted as part of your question with respect to steps 15 and 16.

The image shows the following message.

Warning: Filesystem is FAT32 according to fat_length and fat32_length fields,
  but has only 51068 clusters, less than the required minimum of 65525.
  This may lead to problems on some systems.

This warning occurred because the drive on your Mac has a sector size of 4096 bytes. However, the answer referenced an example Mac with a sector size of only 512 bytes. In other words, the new EFI partition you created was too small. The instructions have been changed so the new EFI partition is at least as large as the original EFI partition. In your case, this should be about 315 MB.

To create a larger new EFI partition, you will have to reinstall Ubuntu.

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  • +1 thank you very much @David Anderson - I will do these steps and follow up here - hopefully to accept this answer.
    – therobyouknow
    Commented Jan 2, 2020 at 9:44
  • Following up, I've decided to stick with just macOS and Windows on BootCamp, using WSL2 on Windows for a Linux environment. apple.stackexchange.com/questions/378754/… Thank you for all your help.
    – therobyouknow
    Commented Dec 10, 2021 at 10:17
  • Interesting to note that one can now install Linux in the same NTFS partition as Windows, because NTFS being supported in Linux kernel and top-level Linux folder names don't clash with Windows ones. theregister.com/2021/11/22/install_linux_on_ntfs This may reduce the steps needed for running Linux with Bootcamp Windows and macOS. Perhaps it could be that in that case we configure the bootmenu option to point at the same partition and give a launch file for it to run. Could be much simpler!
    – therobyouknow
    Commented Dec 10, 2021 at 10:46
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I know this thread is kinda old now and the OP gave up but for anyone else who stumbles in here looking for answers:

I'm almost 100% sure that the OPs issue has to do with partition mapping. It sounds as if windows was installed in UEFI mode instead of the old MBR bootcamp fashion. Windows requires one or the other. Installing Ubuntu automatically converts the disk to "mbr hybrid gpt" and it has to be converted back to true GPT before windows will boot. This can be done with "gdisk" which David Anderson explains above. Make sure to change the disk name to match your disk when envoking gdisk (i.e. /dev/sda). To my knowledge gdisk is the only safe way to do this without loosing data.

NOTE: Ubuntu 22.04 and possibly later versions have "os prober" disabled by default which prevents grub2 from booting windows properly. This can be fixed by adding a certain line to the grub configuration and saving the changes. (In Ubuntu not macos)

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

Gets you to the file. Under the other parameters add the line:

GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false

save the file with "ctrl+x" then "y" then "return"

sudo update-grub

ALSO NOTE: If windows EFI is indeed corrupted it can be restored from a windows install disk or system repair sector using diskpart in the terminal. This will overwrite grub and possibly the macos efi files. Mac doesn't need efi to boot if you do so from holding "option" down. I believe macos firmware update rewrites the files anyway. Ubuntu on system can be booted from a supergrub2disk usb then it's possible to reinstall grub. I have to work in this AM and shouldn't be up typing so I won't go into more detail on this but there's plenty of info elsewhere.

Refind is awesome. There's info on this forum to get it booting from a dedicated partition which has a few advantages.

For making the partition read the following thread and only do the command from step 1. of david anderson's answer. Read his line of code because this will shrink your macos container to 120GB and you might need to change the value (120800M) to a larger number. Choose a number that's just 300-550M (MB) smaller than disk1:

How to stop macOS updates from taking over the rEFInd boot manager?

For getting refind installed look here to david anderson's answer:

Bless error when installing rEFInd

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  • Thanks for picking this up. Is there a way the OP (or anybody) can verify your assumption about GPT before modifying their disk (and potentially making matters worse)? Also, telling people to google who come here for answers isn‘t all that helpful. If it is relevant for the answer, please include the necessary details directly.
    – nohillside ♦
    Commented Jun 28, 2022 at 7:31
  • Edited. Glad to help out. I just spent 2 days figuring this out. That's why I'm here. The worst case would be having to reinstall.
    – Digipip
    Commented Jun 28, 2022 at 7:45
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    It's definitely a complex process on my 2012 macbook pro lol. I just got Win 11 installed on the old mbp9,2 and it runs amazingly well. I enjoy accomplishing hacks and things that aren't supposed to be possible. The old macs are still great machines IMO. You have a point though. The more you dive into these things the more you see how inefficient things are written and how much easier things could be. Every brand of OS has ridiculous trip ups.
    – Digipip
    Commented Jun 28, 2022 at 9:16
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    The forum wants me to start chat but can't find PMs here. Anyway I would recommend staying away from 22.04 for now. Drivers and such can be a nightmare.
    – Digipip
    Commented Jun 28, 2022 at 9:25
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    TY. Happy to contribute.
    – Digipip
    Commented Jun 28, 2022 at 9:27

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