Feeling grubby
I have been having some minor problems.
It was more of an irritation than a problem but yesterday I decided to do something about it.
I have this grand new laptop. In every respect it is one of the best I have ever used. Except for the little irritation.
I would fire up the machine and instead of being presented with a nice little menu offering me Linux or Windows, I would get a blank screen and a little “grub>” cursor. Fuck all use to man or beast. I would have to do a Ctrl+Alt+Del in the hopes of something different. Sometimes I would switch off and on again. I am a trier.
Occasionally I would actually get the Linux/Windows menu, but selecting either would usually give an error “Command failed” or if I was lucky “You need to load the kernel first”.
After ten or so reboots it would suddenly throw up the correct menu and I could run my Linux or Windows.
I think I might be forgiven for trying to fix this?
So I searched the Interwebs. I tried Boot Repair. I tried a few other suggestions. None of them worked. Yesterday I had a fuckit moment and decided to start completely from scratch and do a Factory Restore. So I had to back up everything first which took an age.
I navigated through the many Dell menus until I found the Factory Restore. It warned me in no uncertain terms that I was about to wipe everything and that the machine would revert to its original pristine condition. I sighed and told it to go ahead. Off it went churning away and finally announced that my machine was as good as new. I rebooted.
grub>
FUCK! Now I couldn’t get into anything. The machine was bricked.
Using my USB stick I tried all sorts of stuff like revisiting Boot Rescue [no good] or a few other suggestions such as manually generating my menu.
This morning I tried a fresh Factory Restore. Maybe it would behave itself this time? It didn’t. All I got was grub>. Strangely though if I went into the F2 Boot menu it said that I had WIndow and Linux installed but I couldn’t access either. In desperation I did a Linux install. Maybe it would fix the problem. It did. Up to a point.
I am now back to rebooting about ten times before I can get into Linux or Windows. Both are working once I get in [but of course I have to reinstall all my own software except for Linux where my backup was nearly unnecessary].
I got into my current Linux after about eight reboots. I’m pissed off with it and can’t find any solution.
And the central heating has packed up.
I must have pissed off God at some point.
Since the heat is on the fritz as well; possibly your computer, which has a mind of it's own (after a fashion) has decided not to do a damned thing until you warm it up in there.
Did the box it came in have any reference to it being the "HAL 3000" version?
Luckily I have backups. I still have the old heating system [which Herself wanted taken out] and that is working fine, though not quite as efficient. I also have a backup laptop to do frantic searches on ["HELP – My Linux / Windows is fucked"].
I still don't know what the root problem is………
I know what it is. You've fiddled with the bloody thing haven't you? 🙂
Of course. I'm a bloke. Fiddling is mandatory.
I installed Linux as a dual boot option on my Win 7 machine over a year ago, and have never been particularly happy with it. Most times I would get a weird screen of wavy lines after selecting Windowze, and always used to fear it would fail to load. On the odd occasion that W7 did a BSOD (I blame the particular machine, rather than the OS), I had to first boot into Linux, and then reboot to get W7 back. Later, after a few problems (of my own making) I rolled W7 back to an earlier image, and found the boot selection menu had gone – just W7.
So I decided “Fuck It” and won’t bother with dual boot ever again. As my lappy has one drive installed in a DVD “caddy”, I’ve bought a second one, along with another SSD HDD, and from now on will simply shut it down and switch caddies to get each O/S. It takes no longer than going through the boot menu, and if I bollocks one up it won’t affect the other.
That's not a bad idea. Either that or have a machine dedicated to each system. I'm beginning to think along those lines.
I have this bookmarked on my phone just for such problems https://linoxide.com/linux-how-to/grub-rescue-commands/
Nice one. Thanks Brian.
One thing that weird is that nobody seems to have had a similar problem to mine, and believe me – I have searched long and hard!
Well you did order their trees demise. The blackbirds are messing with you.
Just on the off chance, is the BIOS the right version for your machine or has it become corrupted? Just spitballing, but that would be my first port of call. The fix is an easy but slightly nerve-wracking BIOS refresh, then I'd try the GRUB repair if that didn't do the trick.
The machine is new so the BIOS should be the latest. Corruption is a possibility. The problem is that the Factory Restore can still leave Grub unaffected which is an oversight on the part of Dell. In other words, it's not a complete restore to factory condition.
Turn secure boot off then see what happens.
A lot of the time I was getting messages to turn off Secure Boot so I did. I also removed Windows Hibernate as that can cause problems.
Anyhows, I applied the Nuclear Option yesterday –
Make sure Secure Boot is off.
Boot into pen drive.
Nuke all the Linux partitions [ /, /home, /swap] – all 600Gb..
Remove any vestige of Linux Grub.
Fire up Factory Restore
Once Windows is running do a full disk check.
Install Linux
Switch on Secure Boot.
Update everything and reinstall all software.
So far everything is running smoothly with one exception – doing a Reboot from Windows brings up my old friend grub>. A hard reboot has worked perfectly every time [so far] …….