Wubi for Ubuntu 14.10 doesn't work

Good news and bad news

Wubi for 14.10 now recognizes and prevents installing on computers with EFI firmware. This saves those users from going through the entire installation and ending up with an obscure wubildr.mbr error. That's good and it's my patch that has finally been promoted after a 1.5 year delay (for unknown reasons).

The bad news is that Wubi no longer works for computers with BIOS firmware either, but you'll have to go through the entire installation to find out. This seems to be due to a libparted issue in the latest version of ubiquity (Ubuntu's main installer).

So, as per my previous advice... avoid Wubi. But if you must use it, don't use 14.10's Wubi and instead see my previous post on how to install 14.04.1 Wubi.

Installing Ubuntu 14.04.1 with Wubi

Some people still want to install Wubi. Even though I would say that it's not supported. Not really. But it's still produced.
So what happened with 14.04 and 14.04.1. First off, there were some problems because the root.disk is always mounted ro (readonly), and then remounted rw (read-write) during the boot process, but starting with 14.04 the readonly option seems to be applied to the creation of the loop device, and this doesn't allow remounting as read-write. So 14.04 fails to boot unless you change the initial mount option to rw. (Hold down Shift key at boot, edit the grub entry. Ctrl+X to boot. Not pretty.)

And then the devs forgot to produce the Wubi.exe for 14.04.1.

But still some people want to install it. Here's how:

1. Download the ISO for Ubuntu 14.04.1
2. Download the Wubi.exe for Ubuntu 14.04
3. Save these in the same directory
4. Turn off your internet connection
5. Run Wubi.exe and complete the install (WITHOUT REBOOTING)
6. Turn back on the internet
7. Reboot.
8. Let Ubuntu install and reboot
9. Select Ubuntu from the Windows menu, and hold down the SHIFT key
10. Press E to edit the ubuntu entry. Change the readonly (ro) to readwrite (rw) as follows:

Change:
linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-32-generic root=UUID=55B018A020A3F99A loop=/ubuntu/disks/root.disk ro rootflags=sync quiet splash $vt_handoff

To read:
linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.13.0-32-generic root=UUID=55B018A020A3F99A loop=/ubuntu/disks/root.disk rw rootflags=sync quiet splash $vt_handoff

11. Hit Ctrl+X to boot
12. Save yourself some bother and modify the script /etc/grub.d/10_lupin so that you don't have to do this everytime you boot. Instructions here: Ubuntu 14.04 not booting after error message. /tmp could not be mounted

That is the simplest fix, however it's best to patch the file /usr/share/initramfs-tools/scripts/local as shown here (run update-initramfs -u afterwards).

Edited 2014-11-07: corrected description of why the boot process fails with the ro option