I have a small USB drive that I use to run elementary OS. I want to use this in multiple PC's so it can't have any specific configuration. The issue is that I like to use it on my work PC as although it has nice hardware, it still runs XP, and has so many dodgey chinese apps on it that it runs so slow and I don't trust the security. On this PC it boots fine as it has a legacy style BIOS so grub-pc works fine.

I also want to run it on my UEFI PC at home as Windows 8.1+ don't support my MIDI drums. The problem is that on my home PC I get a black screen unless I boot through recovery mode but this seems to disable GPU acceleration. I think the issue is related to it having grub-pc and not grub-uefi.

Is it possible to have GRUB UEFI and GRUB-PC installed at the same time?


As far as I am aware, that is not possible, however I will ask to check. You are probably best simply disabling secure boot on your newer device to maintain compatibility.

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  • Another option might be to write a USB installer with persistence, but that isn't quite the same. – Lewis Goddard Dec 15 '15 at 23:42

You can't install grub UEFI and grub PC in the same time I think (I'm not totally sure about it).

First check in your BIOS settings of your efi pc if you can enbale legacy support. On my computer I can't boot anything exept a live usb with legacy enbaled. Both Windows, ubuntu mate and elementary os where installed with efi.

I have a dual boot with Ubuntu MATE and Windows 10 on my UEFI laptop, and elementary fully installed (not live USB) on a usb 3 external hard drive.

If you are using a live USB that should work fine on both efi and legacy (works for me with ubuntu and haven't tried elementary)

I have two options to boot :

Use the Ubuntu MATE grub installed on my laptop. I added a GRUB entry by running boot repair from Ubuntu MATE with the external hard drive plugged in.

I can also use super GRUB22 disk burned on a USB stick and boot from it. This supports all platforms and all computers, and auto detect all OSs. You just have to boot from it and choose your OS. You need to have both your usb drive with elementary and your usb drive with super GRUB22 disk plugged in, but once booted, you can unplug super GRUB2 disk.

If in any moment you need to install grub somewhere else or reinstall it, run boot repair :

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install boot-repair
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  • But like I said if I use recovery mode in grub then proceed with a normal boot it works just fine, but eOS has no GPU acceleration. Anyway, I think I'll just purchase another USB drive for the uefi PC, I'm living in China, so can get a nice USB 3 drive for pocket change. – Luke Chadwick Dec 20 '15 at 2:08

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