Troubleshooting why Linux / Grub / etc. won't boot on my desktop PC?

[PianoPlayer88Key]

TL;DR: Linux / GRUB refuses to boot on my desktop PC (except on one or two occasions) in the last 2 weeks or so since I did a Windows update on my SSD (from 1803 to 1809).  Tried booting from a USB, tried installing YUMI MULTIBOOT on a hard drive (see below for why a HDD), tried changing a few UEFI settings, etc.  Something made it work once or twice, but refused to work again.  The USB flash drive does bring up MULTIBOOT when booting it on an old pre-UEFI laptop.  Any ideas how to fix it so Linux and Multiboot USB will boot properly?

 

 

 

I've been having issues booting Linux and my multiboot USB drive on my desktop PC for the past week or two.  It started after I booted to Windows once a few weeks ago after having not booted it in a while.  Windows 10 was on version 1803, it said it was no longer supported and wanted to update to 1809.  I thought fine, go ahead and update.

After the update though ... when I try to boot to any Linux / GRUB based partition, it just comes up with a blinking cursor, and I have to reset / power-cycle to reboot.  (Ctrl+Alt+Del doesn't work.)

I tried updating Windows to 1909, that didn't change anything.

 

 

 

Before Windows update messed it up, when things were working properly... the way things worked were ... after hitting F11 to get the boot device selection menu:

• "Windows Boot Manager" (default setting) - boots Windows off my SSD (256GB Crucial M550 - CT256M550SSD1)
• "CT256M550SSD1" - should boot to Grub menu which has Linux, Memtest, an option to go to WIndows (but idk if it works right right now)
• "USB: Samsung Flash Drive DUO 11" - should boot to YUMI Multiboot menu, with multiple options (Ultimate Boot CD which isn't working properly, a couple older WIndows ISOs, a bunch of Linux distros)
• "UEFI: (FAT) Samsung Flash Drive DUO 1100" - boots to a Windows installer screen (the text one that says choose 32 or 64 bit Windows)

 

 

But, only "Windows Boot Manager" and "UEFI...." are working properly.  The USB version of the flash drive hasn't worked at all since the Windows update.

Interesting thing though ... the "CT256....." HAS actually properly booted the GRUB menu maybe ONCE or TWICE out of like several dozen attempts, since the update.  So something is making it very intermittent, I don't know what.

 

I also tried using the YUMI installer (which runs under Windows) to put it on a blank HGST 1TB 2.5" HDD I had laying around.  Why a hard drive, you ask?  Well, I only have one other USB flash drive which is dead, and my attempts to boot from an SD card (via a USB card reader) failed.

 

 

 

Some system specs:

• CPU = Intel i7-4790K
• Mobo = ASRock Z97 Extreme6, UEFI version P2.80
• RAM = 32GB (4x8GB) G.Skill Ares DDR3-1600 CL9
• Case = Fractal Design Define R5
• SSD = Crucial 2.5" 256GB CT256M550SSD1
• too many other storage devices to list, but the HGST drive I was testing (for an alternate install method) was 1TB HGST 2.5" HTS541010A9E680

 

 

I tried resetting UEFI to default settings, I tried toggling secure boot, I tried toggling some options in CPM.  After one of those was one of the times it booted once properly, but then it refused to boot Linux a second time.  I went and tried to redo the settings changes, that didn't bring up Linux either.

 

 

I recorded a video yesterday showing several attempts to boot Linux.  Timestamps with descriptions of what I was doing are in the description, and duplicated below the video here.  Basically I tried booting from a few different drives, tried booting to specific drives with the other drives disconnected, even tried booting to the same 1TB HGST HDD (didn't try the 256GB Crucial SSD) and the USB flash drive in an old Dell D830 laptop that predates UEFI.  Booting off the HDD didn't work (I may have done something wrong when setting it up), but booting to the USB flash drive DID bring up the multiboot menu.

 

 

 

 

Spoiler

 

0:00 - power on desktop system
0:16 - allow default boot (to Windows 10).
(have 256GB Crucial M550 SSD, 1TB 2.5" HGST HDD and 64GB Samsung USB Flash drive plugged in.  
  When pulling up boot menu, "Windows Boot Manager" goes to Windows, 
  and "CT256M550SSD1" SHOULD go to Linux.  Both are on the same SSD.)
0:36 - initiate reboot
1:00 - attempt boot to Linux partition on SSD (CT256M550SSD1), fails (blank screen, blinking cursor upper left)
1:32 - reboot (reset button)
1:48 - attempt boot 64GB Flash drive USB mode (should be multiboot / YUMI), fails
2:18 - (after reset again) boot 64GB flash in UEFI mode, comes up with Windows setup 32 vs 64 bit options.
2:23 - (had canceled windows setup), attempt boot 1TB HDD (had tried to load multiboot on it previously), fails.
2:39 - unplug SATA cables from SSD and HDD, now ONLY 64GB USB flash plugged in.
3:00 - attempt USB boot from 64GB flash = fail.
3:21 - plug in 1TB HDD, unplug USB flash
3:39 - fails to boot to that multiboot partition.  (Note that the HDD is the ONLY device plugged in, 
  so no Windows installs trying to prevent it from booting.)
3:52 - remove 1TB HDD from desktop...
4:41 - insert 1TB HDD in older laptop (Dell D830), power on
4:54 - attempt boot - fail, with the same blinking cursor.
5:09 - insert 64GB USB drive into D830
5:25 - boot off USB flash drive ... YUMI Multiboot USB comes up properly
5:37 - power off laptop, remove 1TB HDD and 64GB USB
5:58 - plug 64GB USB into desktop
6:15 - attempt to boot to YUMI = fail, blinking cursor.


I can't figure out why GRUB / Multiboot isn't working properly on the desktop.  (It quit working properly after a Windows update, 
  going from like 1803 to 1809.)  It's very inconsistent though - once in a while booting to the Linux Grub menu / partition 
  on the 256GB SSD will work, but it has become the exception rather than the rule.

 

 

I had to use the CODE tags because just pasting straight text didn't remember the line breaks / carriage returns.  (Also I put it in a spoiler.)

 

 

Also I took photos of my UEFI settings and put them in a photo album.  I'm not sure WHICH setting I might need to change to make Linux / Grub boot properly, so I took pics of pretty much all of it.  (There's no admin passwords or anything like that.)

 

 

What's really annoying with troubleshooting it is the fact that it randomly has worked once or twice.  So I can't figure out what might be going on.

 

 

One of the next things I might attempt is to reformat and reinstall YUMI Multiboot (maybe using the UEFI version) on the flash drive, then if that boots up, try to use that to install Ubuntu Studio 20.04 on the 1TB hard drive, then try to boot Linux off that.

 

One thing I've suspected, but now am a lot less sure about, is the possibility that whenever any drive with a Windows install is plugged in, the system refuses to boot to anything *BUT* Windows (with the one or two time exceptions I already mentioned.)

 

I'm pretty sure it's not a corrupt GRUB / boot partition, because 1 - the SSD *HAS* properly booted to the Grub menu (then Linux) a couple times, and the USB drive *DOES* bring up the multiboot (Linux, etc) menu on an older pre-UEFI laptop.

 

 

 

I'm at a loss for what to do about this.   Got any ideas?  I'd rather not have to reinstall yet ... HOWEVER ...

I am also considering getting another SSD for that system, then, putting Windows on one SSD and Linux on the other, rather than splitting the same SSD for multiple partitions.

Basically I'm considering getting maybe a 1TB or 2TB NVMe SSD (Sabrent Rocket, Corsair MP510, Patriot VPN100)  and putting that in my current laptop (Clevo P750DM-G, although idk if an SSD with a heatsink would fit, like the Patriot), and taking the 1TB 970 Evo out that's in there now, and putting that in my desktop.  Then I would probably install Windows to the 970 Evo, and Linux to the Crucial M550.

 

 

 

Also there's another minor thing which -- well, with the current issue I can't do anything about it right now, but before that...

 

Some time ago I had cloned my 256GB M550 SSD to a 1TB WD HDD (WD10EADS).  (Can't remember if I used Clonezilla or the linux "dd" command, but the latter is more likely I think.  Basically I wanted a clone that I could boot from if the not-yet-processed fertilizer smacked an NF-A20's grandma, as far as the SSD or its partitions were concerned.)

If I boot to Windows while that drive is plugged in, then go into disk management, it says "This drive is offline because of a signature collision with a disk that is online" or however it's phrased.

If I boot to Linux, specifically selecting my SSD (CT256M550SSD1) while WD10EADS was plugged in, I noticed it taking a bit longer to boot than normal, AND the login screen looking different, and the menus as well.  Go into Gparted or Gnome Disks utility ... and the Linux partition on the HARD DRIVE (WD10EADS) was set as FIlesystem Root!

Basically what I had to do to be able to access that drive from Linux, but not boot from it was ... Unplug the drive, boot to Linux on the SSD, *THEN* plug the drive in.

[Sauron]

This is just Windows being a dick. Basically the update overwrote the boot partition and deleted or broke grub's configuration. You can solve this by regenerating a sane grub configuration or by installing grub on a different drive, which has the added bonus of being safe from further Windows updates.

[sp331yi]

2 minutes ago, Sauron said:

This is just Windows being a dick

LOL -- always has been!

[PianoPlayer88Key]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

This is just Windows being a dick. Basically the update overwrote the boot partition and deleted or broke grub's configuration. You can solve this by regenerating a sane grub configuration or by installing grub on a different drive, which has the added bonus of being safe from further Windows updates.

That's what I was thinking at first... BUT...

 

Why did GRUB (on the SSD) actually load properly on a couple reboots AFTER the issue started cropping up?  (Most recent was about a day or 2 ago, previous was I think a week or few days before that.)

 

Why did GRUB / multiboot *NOT* load properly on my USB flash drive even when I DISCONNECTED my SSD? (The SSD has Windows, plus my main Linux / GRUB, on it.)

 

 

I'm looking at reformatting that USB stick, reloading multiboot on it (YUMI runs inside Windows), then (while my WIndows SSD is disconnected) trying to use it to install some flavor of Linux (like Ubuntu Studio 20.04) on a 1TB 2.5" hard drive, just to see if that works.

 

 

Also would it be a good idea, as I proposed in the OP, to get another SSD and put each OS on its own physical drive?

 

I was thinking of putting Windows on an M.2 NVMe and Linux on my existing 2.5" SATA SSD... but... if it so happens that with Windows present, the PC refuses to boot to Linux, it would be a lot easier to unplug a 2.5" SATA drive than unplug an M.2 drive (at least on my board - my GPU isn't installed right now but the M.2 slot would be under it), so maybe I should do it the other way around (Linux on M.2, Windows on 2.5")....  I would have liked to have my Windows pagefile and hibernation file on the NVMe though.  (Actually my daily-driver laptop's 64GB RAM isn't enough anymore ... putting the pagefile on the 970 Evo in there noticeably helped.)

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

Why did GRUB (on the SSD) actually load properly on a couple reboots AFTER the issue started cropping up?  (Most recent was about a day or 2 ago, previous was I think a week or few days before that.)

Did you run any updates in Linux? If you did that may have caused grub to regenerate its configuration depending on how it was installed.

1 hour ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

Why did GRUB / multiboot *NOT* load properly on my USB flash drive even when I DISCONNECTED my SSD? (The SSD has Windows, plus my main Linux / GRUB, on it.)

Possibly because it's looking for the SSD and is not finding it.

1 hour ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

Also would it be a good idea, as I proposed in the OP, to get another SSD and put each OS on its own physical drive?

Yes.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

23 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Did you run any updates in Linux? If you did that may have caused grub to regenerate its configuration depending on how it was installed.

Well, now that I remember... Last week I think (was after the Windows update), the USB flash drive did actually boot to its multiboot grub menu, but only if I disconnected my SSD.

So, I put a 20.04 LTS Ubuntu on it (via the Windows YUMI installer), then unplugged the SSD, booted the USB, hot-plugged the SSD (had to reboot in the meantime cause I didn't have hot-plug enabled for that port - figured I didn't need to be hot-unplugging my boot drive), and installed a fresh copy of 20.04 LTS on the SSD, wiping the existing Linux install.

That new install did boot once after that, then once more like 2 days ago.  Otherwise it doesn't want to load GRUB at all.

 

I wonder if there's a way to update or fix GRUB from in Windows, even if it means manually editing a configuration file...  Or if there was a safe way to mount ext* partitions in LossOfSleep...

 

23 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Possibly because it's looking for the SSD and is not finding it.

Hmm... Well the USB GRUB does load on an old laptop.  I haven't tried it on my current laptop, as I don't feel like shutting down my active apps / projects and rebooting.

(It's not as simple as file -> save, alt+f4, win+D, alt+F4, etc, cause it's quite complicated to re-open my programs, explorer windows, arrange everything, etc, and it still doesn't remember some things like undo/redo history, among other things.

Often I still haven't gotten back to exactly where I left off in my workflow even like a few days after rebooting, IF I even achieve that.  A success would be the equivalent of never having shut down / restarted in the first place, except for whatever issue that was the reason for the reboot having been fixed.)

 

23 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Yes.

Ah.  Now I gotta decide exactly what SSD to get.  Thinking of getting 2 or 3 - one for an extra boot drive and another to replace some old <2TB hard drives I still have.  (Or I might consider a newer <2TB HDD since it's a lot cheaper, but think maybe an SSD might be worth the extra cost.  Also thinking of getting a couple 12 or 14 TB HDDs, etc, and would need a way to get rid of some older drives that mostly still work... But I should probably talk more about all that in its own topic in the storage sub-forum.)

[PianoPlayer88Key]

@Sauron -- I tried reformatting the USB drive and reinstalling some multiboot ISOs on it.  Took several tries - first time using YUMI-UEFI 0.0.2.2 it kept giving me a syslinux 10737... error saying it wouldn't be bootable.  I then used YUMI 0.2.7.0, and only after I checked the option to wipe the entire disk did it not give me that error.  So, I loaded Ubuntu Studio, Peppermint, Linux Mint (Mate), Xubuntu, and Ultimate Boot CD on it.

 

Then, I tried booting to it.

 

It STILL refuses to boot (gets to the blinking cursor), even with ALL other drives disconnected.

 

I'm starting to wonder if my mobo's BIOS might need to be reflashed, or some other drastic option  (not ready to buy a new motherboard yet until DDR5 and PCIe 5.0 are available to the masses, and if CPUs don't have a big enough performance (and perf/$) jump from my 4790K by then or the 2nd CPU generation after (current generation comes NOWHERE close to what I'm looking for), I may have to wait for DDR6.)

 

It was working in an old pre-UEFI laptop.  I wonder if I could maybe put a blank 1TB HDD in that laptop, run it, install Linux on the HDD in that old laptop, then move the HDD to the desktop and try booting it there?  (I hear Linux is more forgiving than Windows on moving an already-set-up boot drive to a completely different computer.)

[Sauron]

16 minutes ago, PianoPlayer88Key said:

I'm starting to wonder if my mobo's BIOS might need to be reflashed, or some other drastic option

Hmm I doubt it...

 

Try reinstalling it, make sure that you boot in EFI mode for installation and select a boot partition that is on the correct drive.

[PianoPlayer88Key]

5 hours ago, Sauron said:

Hmm I doubt it...

 

Try reinstalling it, make sure that you boot in EFI mode for installation and select a boot partition that is on the correct drive.

Okay I was able to boot to Linux just now on my desktop.  Because of past behavior though (it working once, then not working subsequently), I'm not quite ready to call the issue solved yet.

 

 

 

Here's what I did...

 

I already mentioned previously about reformatting and reinstalling the multiboot loaders on my USB flash drive, and my desktop still refusing to boot to it.

 

Meanwhile, my laptop hit a RAM, CPU and swap file wall (was 95+% CPU (i7-6700K) usage, RAM about 63.5GB +/- 500MB (64GB installed), total committed in Win10 task manager said 164/164 GB.  The GamersNexus Ryzen 3 3300X review video froze, then the screen went black (backlight still on), the sound did that stuttery buzz for several seconds (know what I mean? Idk what it's actually called), then the laptop powered off.

 

After rebooting and confirming it was a fresh session, I shut it down, then took all 4 of the SSDs (250GB M.2-2260 Crucial MX200 boot, 1TB M.2-2280 Samsung 970 Evo, 2x 1050GB 2.5" Crucial MX300) out of the laptop.

 

Then, I grabbed a blank 1TB 2.5" Toshiba MQ01ABD100 HDD I had laying around and put it in the laptop, plugged in my USB flash drive, and turned it on.

 

Once I hit F7 (on laptop) to bring up the boot menu, it booted to the flash drive.  UEFI boot is off on the laptop - been set that way all along.  (F2 to go to setup, then changing boot order in BIOS also worked.)  Funny thing - my 4790K desktop has a fancy UEFI graphical interface, but my 6700K laptop is the old style classic white text on blue background.

 

Also Interestingly, Parted Magic on UBCD doesn't work from the flash drive (chokes when searching for parted magic 2013 whatever .sqfs), but it works from an actual CD.  (I noticed when YUMI was putting ubcd on the flash drive, it was copying the ISO directly to the drive.)

 

Anyway, I started up Ubuntu Studio from the flash drive, then proceeded with setting up for install.  Set a 2MB partition at the beginning of the drive (thought it was weird I wasn't getting the option to make it a reserved boot partition), 40GB swap (desktop has 32GB, I want hibernation available, yeah I know recent Ubuntu can use swapfile instead but I was reading about issues with hibernation and swapfile), 80GB "/", 600GB or so as /home, and the remaining 240GB or whatever blank.

 

Installed Ubuntu, rebooted to the HDD.  Installed GParted, noticed the HDD had an extended partition.  "Wait, GPT disks aren't supposed to have that."  Opened Gnome "Disks" Utility, it said "Master Boot Record".  Okay I gotta redo this.

 

Rebooted back to the flash, ran Ubuntu Studio "try" mode.  Opened GParted, created a new GPT partition table on the HDD, then re-added partitions similar to what I did before, with a few minor changes.  (One being that I also put a 500MB partition after the 2MB BIOS grub partition thinking I might try to make the drive compatible with both boot types.  Right now Linux thinks it's swap though.  Also I added an NTFS partition in the remaining blank space.)

 

Ran the Ubuntu installer from the live session, choosing the "something else" option with the disk.

The first 2MB is set as reserved BIOS boot.

Next 510 MB is swap, although I intended to leave it unformatted (for later possible EFI boot partition).  Then, about 40 GB swap, 75 GB ext4 "/”, 576 GB ext4 "/home", and 240GB NTFS "/windows".

 

Proceeded with the (re)install, then booted to the HDD with the fresh Linux install in the laptop.

After installing a few programs, I loaded GParted and Disks to verify the partitioning was set properly this time.  The 2MB partition was properly set as BIOS grub, among other things.  (The 500MB partition is still "swap" - I'm beginning to wonder if maybe it's not possible to have the same disk be compatible with both boot types (BIOS and UEFI)?  I'm already thinking I won't be able to use that HDD in the old Dell D830, which predates GPT.)

 

Then, I shut down the laptop, yanked the 1TB Toshiba HDD, went over to the desktop (which was powered off), unplugged ALL drives (including my 256GB SSD which has dual Windows and Linux on it), plugged in the 1TB HDD, powered on the system, and...

 

 

 

Looks like it did successfully boot to Linux on the HDD ... THIS time.

 

I'm still concerned about whether it will boot properly once I boot to Windows, then try to boot to Linux after that.

 

I guess the thing to do now in the meantime is hot-plug some of my 3.5" HDDs, and do some of the file / folder shuffling I had been planning.  That includes tasks like deleting duplicate folders/files, consolidating things to fewer drives, shuffling partitions (maybe deleting a few if they're no longer needed), etc.  I couldn't do it from Windows cause I wanted to be able to work with ext4 filesystems, and for now Windows won't let me.

 

And of course someone likes to keep interfering with my work.

 

[benitiv]

that's what i call a man cave