Windows 10 and Linux Mint dual boot

It's that time of year again which means I'm off work with spare time to fiddle. IMiniWishy has a new laptop and has requested that Mint be installed dual boot (like all our other machines) so he can fiddle with it a bit. Now here lies the problem.

I've read through this and tried most of this but when I try to boot my USB stick with Mint on I get the boot menu but nothing but a blank machine if I try to run either the normal or compatibility mode versions. I can however boot into a grub prompt absolutely fine. I've disabled fast start and secure boot to do that and have tried turning up the brightness using the laptop Fn keys.

I can also boot from the USB stick in Bios legacy mode but this doesn't recognise Windows 10. I guess that this might be similar to Barnacle's woes where it would work but require a Bios setting change to switch. I'd rather not have miniWishy fiddling around with Bios settings just yet so that wouldn't be a viable option. I want him to learn to fiddle a little a bit but not anywhere near the bits that can prevent it booting.

If it was my machine then I'd just install Mint via Bios legacy mode and see if Grub will recognise the Win10 install but as it's miniWishy's main xmas pressie then I'm rather reticent to do that. Plan b will be a VM via windows to get at Mint but was wondering if any you good gentleman and ladies have any ideas.

@Mr. Barnacle
1. From your thread, you mentioned Bios intervention enabling switching in one of your posts, was this to switch between UEFI and legacy/Bios modes in order to enable the switch or something else?
2. Did you do anything other than use the laptop's Fn keys to switch on the backlight?

FWIW
Acer Aspire F15
i5-5200U
Intel HD Graphics 5500
Windows 10 (secure boot now disabled)

Attempting to dual boot Mint 17.3

I you should switch off secure boot in the bios also.
I did this and recently installed mint on my new asus.

Once booted, it should give and option to install along side installed grub also.

Yes I did that and the boot options for Mint appear but I just get a blank screen when I select the run mint options (compatibility mode or normal).

Daft question - when you get the blank screen, try hitting the keys to increase the screen brightness. Some chipset version do that; took me a while to sort out on a previous 17 installation.

I already tried that after reading through your previous thread but it didn't help unfortunately.

Worth trying a different distro?

Ive just installed Kubuntu onto a laptop. Worth a try.

Certainly wouldn't hurt to try.

Have you thought about Virtualisation software? I use in on my Mac and QNAP NAS, it works well

Parallels

Yes, that's my plan B to run it via a VM in Windows. My preference would be to get a proper dual boot running if possible so I can have a rocket fast Linux install for me to use and miniWishy to foray into whilst he still has the main Windows boot to do homework/programme his lego robot/watch inane crap on youTube.

Well just over 2 1/2 years and I've fixed this . In my defence it was mostly on the "things to do for a very rainy day list" until recently as I had two other computers that would dual boot fine and this one just ran a vm. What changed is that I upgraded my main machine to find the same issue and having two out of three unable to dual boot was the final straw and I finally got my finger out.

Notes to self
Bios upgrade required specific to this Acer laptop in order get Mint to boot
Disable secure boot and install
Select EFI partition selection screen as bootloader partition
Re-enable secure boot
In the Bios select grubx64.efi as a secure option and put this higher up in the boot order than Windows boot manager

HalleFlippinglujah

Yep, gone right off Acer, they've made booting anything other than Windows a bloody nightmare. Anita's machine requires a separate boot loader on a memory stick to boot; it won't let me change the boot loader (though it insists it has, right up to power cycle.)

Funnily enough it wasn't until I started searching including my laptop model that the solutions that moved me forwards seemed to appear. It looks like there's a fair divide as to how the booting behaves between different manufacturers. ASRock motherboard next for the main desktop.

The ASRock proved much easier. I think the only reason it wouldn't play ball initially was hardware and Mint 18.3 related. Tried it with 19 tonight and straight in the back of the net with no messing about with secure boot or signing things.

Got to watch the footy and now heading back downstairs now **** ****** has finished. Result.