Old laptop suddenly won't recognize Linux boot drive
from EddoWagt@feddit.nl to linux@lemmy.ml on 21 Sep 19:09
https://feddit.nl/post/42823294

I’m in a really weird situation, yesterday I installed Linux (Fedora Kinoite) on my mothers laptop (An old Asus F550C) and it worked perfectly fine. Great! Or so I thought.

We needed a few files from Windows 10, so I put that drive in, put the files on a USB stick, put the Linux drive back in and… Nothing? It recognizes the drive, but not the Linux boot option. I put the drive in my pc and it works fine, the boot drive is also still detected in the laptop just fine.

What the hell could it be??

Update: the issue is solved! Windows somehow wiped the efiboot entry.

I mounted the drive from a live usb and ran

sudo efibootmgr --create --disk /dev/sda --part 1 --label “Fedora” --loader ‘\EFI\fedora\shimx64.efi’

After rebooting, the system works again!

#linux

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jlow@discuss.tchncs.de on 21 Sep 19:56 next collapse

Mmmmh, that is strange, my first thought was that Windows messed with / updated the BIOS but since you checked that I’m not sure what else it could be …

just_another_person@lemmy.world on 21 Sep 20:09 next collapse

Not impossible you just killed your drive somehow, though unlikely.

Does the laptop have a manual boot menu you can try and select the drive to boot from?

If it still boots off the LiveUSB, plug that in and see if you can view the filesystem of the drive having issues. Double check in a disk manager that it says it’s bootable, then reboot, go to the LiveUSB Grub menu, and see if there is an option to skip booting the LiveUSB and boot from disk. See if anything happens then. It’s only two levels of debugging, but one or the other is going to show if your drive is not cooperating.

EddoWagt@feddit.nl on 21 Sep 20:20 collapse

The drive is fine, as I can boot from it from my desktop. I’m gonna try booting from a liveusb, maybe it can tell me more

just_another_person@lemmy.world on 22 Sep 00:43 collapse

From the LiveUSB, make sure to check the boot record, and that Grub is there. If not, look up installing grub properly from a LiveUSB. Here’s a general example, though it’s using Ubuntu (shouldn’t matter much) fosslinux.com/…/how-to-repair-the-grub-bootloader…

EddoWagt@feddit.nl on 22 Sep 07:48 collapse

Is the boot record stored on the drive or on the laptop? If the former, it should be okay but I’ll check regardless. If the latter, maybe it got wiped by Windows?

just_another_person@lemmy.world on 22 Sep 09:53 collapse

It’s in the drive.

I’m confused… Did you ever at one point have BOTH drives hooked up to this same machine? Also, you said it boots fine on a separate machine, so it should be there, no?

EddoWagt@feddit.nl on 22 Sep 10:35 collapse

Nope, there is only one sata slot. It should be there, but at this point nothing surprises me anymore. I’m just as confused as you are

muhyb@programming.dev on 22 Sep 00:55 next collapse

I feel like this is somehow related to Windows 10 not being really shut down when you shutdown. Try restarting Windows, and while before it gets pass BIOS, interrupt and shut down there. Then replace the drives and try to boot Linux again.

Redkey@programming.dev on 22 Sep 01:23 collapse

This is another good point. I’d try turning off Fast Startup first, and if that alone doesn’t clear the issue, try this (leaving Fast Startup off).

BCsven@lemmy.ca on 21 Sep 22:10 next collapse

Are you using efi boot. You may need to remove the windows selection and point it to the Linux efi selection in the boot options.

EddoWagt@feddit.nl on 22 Sep 07:52 collapse

I can’t select Linux in the boot options, that’s the problem

BCsven@lemmy.ca on 22 Sep 14:07 collapse

Then the boot entry is probabl messed up. You can try switching to legacy boot, instead of EFI just to see if you have luck but sounds like you will need to have a live USB stick to boot and repair your drive

EddoWagt@feddit.nl on 22 Sep 17:59 collapse

The boot entry was indeed messed up! Managed to fix it from a live usb

BCsven@lemmy.ca on 22 Sep 18:41 collapse

Awesome. Yeah Windows is a Monster

non_burglar@lemmy.world on 22 Sep 14:01 collapse

I’ve dealt with something similar to this on a lenovo ideapad.

The BIOS picks up UEFI info from windows and messes up the boot config and order. I solved it by using grub2 rescue, booting to the correct Linux entry and using grub to update UEFI and write the config correctly again.

Super pain in the a**.

EddoWagt@feddit.nl on 22 Sep 17:55 collapse

This ended up being the issue! Booted up a live USB, mounted the disk and ran

sudo efibootmgr --create --disk /dev/sda --part 1 --label “Fedora” --loader ‘\EFI\fedora\shimx64.efi’

After rebooting it worked again!

Now to never plug a windows drive into that PC again…