ghristov
July 27th, 2020, 04:38 PM
Hello everyone,
I have a Dell Inspiron N5110 that is using BIOS and has no official UEFI support. I am using a Toshiba 640GB HDD with a HDD Caddy in the CD/DVD tray and a Samsung 860 Pro 256GB in place of the HDD. The Windows is installed on the SSD and Ubuntu on the HDD. I did the installation about a year ago and used boot-repair disk along with many different terminal commands to make it boot directly from the CD/DVD and eventually succeeded. However I don't remember the exact steps that I followed to make it happen. I am installing the operating systems using Rufus 3.11 to create a bootable BIOS or UEFI-CSM, MBR USB stick with Ubuntu 20.04 and Windows 10 x64 Pro (may update).
More than a week ago I had to reinstall Windows(due to permission problems), but didn't care to look at the boot config I used. I am now trying to replicate my previous dual boot config to no avail. The boot order currently is:
CD/DVD
Hard Drive
USB storage
Network
eSATA
Diskette Drive
The OS configuration is as follows:
/dev/sda - SSD
/dev/sda1 - System reserved 50MiB (I guess Windows is using it for some legacy support or other info)
/dev/sda2 - Windows System ~232GiB or smth (boot flag is placed here)
/dev/sda3 - System reserved ~513MiB (I guess recovery tools)
unallocated 2.18 MiB
/dev/sdb Toshiba HDD
/dev/sdb1 - ext4, Mounted /, 74.5GiB (also has boot flag, note that I tried using only 1 boot flag i.e. either Win or Ubuntu)
/dev/sdb2 - extended 78GiB
/dev/sdb5 ext4, linux swap, 22.3GiB
/dev/sdb6 ext4, /home 55.88GiB
Rest of drive is unallocated
The error message I keep getting while booting is - "error: no such device: UUID of the HDD; error: unknown filesystem; grub rescue follows". The only way I can boot in to the GRUB menu and select Win/Ubuntu/Memtest is if I press F12 to open the boot menu while the notebook is starting and manually select Hard Disk(it doesn't make sense to me). I have tried doing and mixing the following things, but none seemed to have any positive yield:
Scramble the boot order to give the HDD some time to spin off
Place boot flag on sdb or sda only
Create a /boot partition for Ubuntu when installing it (I always install Ubuntu after I install windows)
Install GRUB using the Ubuntu installer either on sdb or sda - note, in sdX, not sdXY
Tried purging GRUB from Windows, because for some reason, part of it is getting placed there during Ubuntu install (according to Ubuntu logs)
Pulled the HDD with the Ubuntu in it, but the same error pops up (which confirms GRUB is installed in Windows partition, or there is a ROM that's keeping some settings; left the laptop unplugged for some days, without an external battery, but the CMOS battery is still good probably)
Boot-repair disk; multiple times - the yannubuntu version and the regular with recommended repair and targeted advanced options to place GRUB in Ubuntu install location
Before installing Windows, tried using diskpart to convert the SSD to GPT (not sure if this counts toward a hybrid GPT, might be talking nonsense)
Probably several other things I forgot about
Unicorn's blood
Haven't brought religion to it yet
A paste bin of what I tried today - https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/VCmY8BBgxG/
I read a lot of stuff over the course of a week, most of it describing how the Ubuntu system boots up, but everything is scrambled in my head right now. If it's loading GRUB from Windows and it's an MBR drive, it might not be able to read more than 4 partitions (don't believe it works in this manner accross deI hope it is not the HDD Caddy that's causing the late load, because it makes most sense. However this doesn't fit my previous experience with actually making it work seamlessly (for the end-user at least).
I would be very glad if somebody can help me with a solution or at least elaborate what I am missing while doing the installation/repair of the OSes.
Thank you!
I have a Dell Inspiron N5110 that is using BIOS and has no official UEFI support. I am using a Toshiba 640GB HDD with a HDD Caddy in the CD/DVD tray and a Samsung 860 Pro 256GB in place of the HDD. The Windows is installed on the SSD and Ubuntu on the HDD. I did the installation about a year ago and used boot-repair disk along with many different terminal commands to make it boot directly from the CD/DVD and eventually succeeded. However I don't remember the exact steps that I followed to make it happen. I am installing the operating systems using Rufus 3.11 to create a bootable BIOS or UEFI-CSM, MBR USB stick with Ubuntu 20.04 and Windows 10 x64 Pro (may update).
More than a week ago I had to reinstall Windows(due to permission problems), but didn't care to look at the boot config I used. I am now trying to replicate my previous dual boot config to no avail. The boot order currently is:
CD/DVD
Hard Drive
USB storage
Network
eSATA
Diskette Drive
The OS configuration is as follows:
/dev/sda - SSD
/dev/sda1 - System reserved 50MiB (I guess Windows is using it for some legacy support or other info)
/dev/sda2 - Windows System ~232GiB or smth (boot flag is placed here)
/dev/sda3 - System reserved ~513MiB (I guess recovery tools)
unallocated 2.18 MiB
/dev/sdb Toshiba HDD
/dev/sdb1 - ext4, Mounted /, 74.5GiB (also has boot flag, note that I tried using only 1 boot flag i.e. either Win or Ubuntu)
/dev/sdb2 - extended 78GiB
/dev/sdb5 ext4, linux swap, 22.3GiB
/dev/sdb6 ext4, /home 55.88GiB
Rest of drive is unallocated
The error message I keep getting while booting is - "error: no such device: UUID of the HDD; error: unknown filesystem; grub rescue follows". The only way I can boot in to the GRUB menu and select Win/Ubuntu/Memtest is if I press F12 to open the boot menu while the notebook is starting and manually select Hard Disk(it doesn't make sense to me). I have tried doing and mixing the following things, but none seemed to have any positive yield:
Scramble the boot order to give the HDD some time to spin off
Place boot flag on sdb or sda only
Create a /boot partition for Ubuntu when installing it (I always install Ubuntu after I install windows)
Install GRUB using the Ubuntu installer either on sdb or sda - note, in sdX, not sdXY
Tried purging GRUB from Windows, because for some reason, part of it is getting placed there during Ubuntu install (according to Ubuntu logs)
Pulled the HDD with the Ubuntu in it, but the same error pops up (which confirms GRUB is installed in Windows partition, or there is a ROM that's keeping some settings; left the laptop unplugged for some days, without an external battery, but the CMOS battery is still good probably)
Boot-repair disk; multiple times - the yannubuntu version and the regular with recommended repair and targeted advanced options to place GRUB in Ubuntu install location
Before installing Windows, tried using diskpart to convert the SSD to GPT (not sure if this counts toward a hybrid GPT, might be talking nonsense)
Probably several other things I forgot about
Unicorn's blood
Haven't brought religion to it yet
A paste bin of what I tried today - https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/VCmY8BBgxG/
I read a lot of stuff over the course of a week, most of it describing how the Ubuntu system boots up, but everything is scrambled in my head right now. If it's loading GRUB from Windows and it's an MBR drive, it might not be able to read more than 4 partitions (don't believe it works in this manner accross deI hope it is not the HDD Caddy that's causing the late load, because it makes most sense. However this doesn't fit my previous experience with actually making it work seamlessly (for the end-user at least).
I would be very glad if somebody can help me with a solution or at least elaborate what I am missing while doing the installation/repair of the OSes.
Thank you!