WanderingAlbatross
February 4th, 2016, 06:01 PM
Dear friends,
I hate to post as I find it very effective to search for answers to problems within what is already written. I have dealt with a problem that even Rodsbooks, Oldfred and Yannubuntu, the UEFI legends, have written nothing on.
This Toshiba Satellite C855D-S5100 will not boot anything linux UEFI. Not even live booting. I tried many distributions: Ubuntu 14.04, Linux Mint Rebecca, three version of Boot-repair disk, Manjaro, Parted Magic, rEFInd. None of them boot. They will all show their Grub splash screens, then about two seconds after will lock up. (i.e. freeze, no alt-f2, no REISUB, no Num Lock, caps lock, whatever) I have tried all from USB and at least 4 from LiveCD
They will, however, boot with no problems in CSM mode, as opposed to UEFI mode.
For a while I thought it was a graphics problem, but I tried everything I could think of: noacpi acpi=off nomodeset xforcevesa. Even if this were the problem, why would it not be a problem in CSM mode? (a.k.a Legacy boot mode)
Boot-repair is impossible to use unless you can get the system to boot into UEFI first. It gives an error that the system is not in Legacy mode and please boot into UEFI mode first. By the way, my results from a scan of the system are at
http://paste.ubuntu.com/14857715
I then tried Easy BCD 2.3 and their program says they can not allow installation of other operating systems because of it being against Microsoft's UEFI policy.
I then converted the Linux Mint system while already booted into Legacy mode because I was convinced that if I could just get there I would be okay. Here are my commands for doing this:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install grub-efi
This removed grub-pc.
sudo modprobe efivars
sudo grub-install --target=x86_64-efi
sudo grub-install --uefi-secure-boot --target=x86_64-efi
sudo update-grub
With this I finally got the UEFI keys installed in the correct place.
However Windows booted normal, so:
sudo mount /dev/sda2 /boot/efi
sudo cp /boot/efi/ubuntu/* /boot/efi/boot/
sudo cp /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu/* /boot/efi/EFI/boot/
sudo mv /boot/efi/EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi /boot/efi/EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi.backup
sudo mv /boot/efi/EFI/Boot/grubx64.efi /boot/efi/EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi
Then I found Windows still booted normally, so I had to change the same files in a Windows directory on the same /dev/sda2.
So I finally got what I wanted. Of course, it wasn't booting Windows, but Boot-Repair will help, right? So Grub shows up with the Linux Mint in the standard UEFI mode. I clicked on it, and the same locked up condition happened! I'm sure you have all met with this kind of disappointment before.
So here we have successfully proved that it is something with UEFI because this is the exact same system that was working before with legacy Grub.
My time ran out to play with this machine, so I taught the user how to switch between the two in the firmware, which is listed as InsydeH2O Rev 3.7. This is not preferred. The only avenue I have not pursued is updating the firmware. I am writing now so that I can hear any ideas others might have for the time when I can get to this machine again.
I hate to post as I find it very effective to search for answers to problems within what is already written. I have dealt with a problem that even Rodsbooks, Oldfred and Yannubuntu, the UEFI legends, have written nothing on.
This Toshiba Satellite C855D-S5100 will not boot anything linux UEFI. Not even live booting. I tried many distributions: Ubuntu 14.04, Linux Mint Rebecca, three version of Boot-repair disk, Manjaro, Parted Magic, rEFInd. None of them boot. They will all show their Grub splash screens, then about two seconds after will lock up. (i.e. freeze, no alt-f2, no REISUB, no Num Lock, caps lock, whatever) I have tried all from USB and at least 4 from LiveCD
They will, however, boot with no problems in CSM mode, as opposed to UEFI mode.
For a while I thought it was a graphics problem, but I tried everything I could think of: noacpi acpi=off nomodeset xforcevesa. Even if this were the problem, why would it not be a problem in CSM mode? (a.k.a Legacy boot mode)
Boot-repair is impossible to use unless you can get the system to boot into UEFI first. It gives an error that the system is not in Legacy mode and please boot into UEFI mode first. By the way, my results from a scan of the system are at
http://paste.ubuntu.com/14857715
I then tried Easy BCD 2.3 and their program says they can not allow installation of other operating systems because of it being against Microsoft's UEFI policy.
I then converted the Linux Mint system while already booted into Legacy mode because I was convinced that if I could just get there I would be okay. Here are my commands for doing this:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install grub-efi
This removed grub-pc.
sudo modprobe efivars
sudo grub-install --target=x86_64-efi
sudo grub-install --uefi-secure-boot --target=x86_64-efi
sudo update-grub
With this I finally got the UEFI keys installed in the correct place.
However Windows booted normal, so:
sudo mount /dev/sda2 /boot/efi
sudo cp /boot/efi/ubuntu/* /boot/efi/boot/
sudo cp /boot/efi/EFI/ubuntu/* /boot/efi/EFI/boot/
sudo mv /boot/efi/EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi /boot/efi/EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi.backup
sudo mv /boot/efi/EFI/Boot/grubx64.efi /boot/efi/EFI/Boot/bootx64.efi
Then I found Windows still booted normally, so I had to change the same files in a Windows directory on the same /dev/sda2.
So I finally got what I wanted. Of course, it wasn't booting Windows, but Boot-Repair will help, right? So Grub shows up with the Linux Mint in the standard UEFI mode. I clicked on it, and the same locked up condition happened! I'm sure you have all met with this kind of disappointment before.
So here we have successfully proved that it is something with UEFI because this is the exact same system that was working before with legacy Grub.
My time ran out to play with this machine, so I taught the user how to switch between the two in the firmware, which is listed as InsydeH2O Rev 3.7. This is not preferred. The only avenue I have not pursued is updating the firmware. I am writing now so that I can hear any ideas others might have for the time when I can get to this machine again.