Dual-Boot Windows-10 + Ubuntu-18.04 for Dell laptops (Inspiron, G3, XPS)
So I recently purchased a Dell Inspiron 5000 laptop with pre-installed Windows 10. For various reasons I needed a dual boot system with both Ubuntu and Windows installed. I have compiled all the steps which I needed to perform to set up the dual boot, since I personally couldn’t find any one page with all the steps laid out. I have marked all the references in the steps.
These exact same steps have been tried on the following laptops and the dual-boot is working perfectly, and I believe these should be valid for many other Dell series laptops:
1) Inspiron 15 5000 Series
2) Dell G3 15
3) Dell XPS 15 7000 series
So here is the step-by-step guide I followed to set up dual boot in my laptop:
1) Windows 10 in Dell comes with Secure-Boot and Bitlocker encryption, which hides it to the Ubuntu installer. Firstly, login to your Windows OS, and disable Bitlocker encryption (this might take some time):
Start->Control Panel->System and Security->Bitlocker Drive Encryption->Turn off Bitlocker / Decrypt the drive
Detailed link: [here]
2) Free up some space in your hard-disk to create “unallocated space”using the built-in Disk-Management tool in Windows 10(no need to install any additional software) [Details in this link].
3) Now we will reboot the system in “Safe Mode” and then make some changes in the BIOS. For doing this, open Command Prompt (cmd) as Admin, and run following command:
>> bcdedit /set {current} safeboot minimal
Now exit the cmd prompt and turn off the PC.
4) Now turn it on, and keep pressing F12 until the boot options screen appears. Choose the BIOS Setup option, and ensure that following variables are set as described below in BIOS [Details in this link]:
a) Settings->General->Boot Sequence->Choose “UEFI”
b) Settings->General->Advanced Boot Options->Uncheck “Enable Legacy Option ROMs”
c) Settings->Secure Boot->Secure Boot Enabled->Choose “Disabled” / Uncheck “Enabled”
d) Settings->System Configuration->SATA Operation->Choose “AHCI” instead of “RAID ON” (This is an additional step which is not in the above mentioned link, and it is very important to do this in Safe mode otherwise you might not be able to access Windows after installation!!)
5) After making these changes, save and exit and then the system will automatically boot normally in safe mode. Open the command prompt again and disable the safe mode by typing this command:
>> bcdedit /deletevalue {current} safeboot
Exit the cmd prompt and turn off the system.
6) Now prepare the Ubuntu bootable USB/DVD and then connect it to the PC [Steps in this link].
7) Now the rest of the steps are easy. If you did everything above correctly then further steps are all cake walk. Turn the PC on, and keep pressing F12 to go into the boot options screen. Select your external storage, and Ubuntu installer will launch.
8) Follow the instructions as they come on screen, and while choosing the partition, choose the unallocated space (Which was created in Step 2). (For details, follow the “Installing Ubuntu as the Second Operating System” section in this Dell article)
8) After the installation is complete, the system will reboot, and hopefully all should be right and you should see the normal purple Grub screen with Ubuntu, Windows listed and you can choose the OS you want to boot from the menu. Hence Dual-Boot setup is successfully completed.
P.S. In my case in all the three cases everything went well but if something breaks in your case, don’t panic there are plenty of blogs and articles on web which should be able to help for your specific problem :)
