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It is extremely unlikely that an update of your Ubuntu or any OS for that matter is going to destroy the option in your BIOS firmware. When you access your BIOS and go to the screen show in your first post and arrow down to add new option or Delete option and highlight either and hit the Enter key, do you see any options, particularly under the Delete option. Did you see a boot entry previously for Ubuntu in your UEFI settings in the BIOS?
Unfortunately, I'm completely stuck. I cannot boot my laptop. I inserted my old bootable flashes and they don't appear in the boot menu. I tried my old bootable CD with Ubuntu and Knoppix. They don't. boot. either. When I am trying to manually create new boot options I can see the content of the flash disk. (I attached a few pictures.) I am able to select some efi files and create boot options. This way, I created a boot option for each efi file I found. But, after I restart the laptop I don't see all these boot options anymore. Also sometimes after trying to exit the BIOS I'm still stuck in the BIOS, I'm just moved to the first tab.Quote:
Originally Posted by oldfred
There might be something wrong with the BIOS hardware. I'm not an expert on this. It's just extremely strange that this happened right after an Ubuntu update. It's hard to believe that Ubuntu messed up my BIOS. But it's also hard to believe that it's just a coincidence. It happened on a Saturday. Before that update, I booted into Windows and updated it in case Ubuntu broke after the update. Then I booted back into Ubuntu and did that botched update. Then my laptop lost its existing boot options and won't let me boot from USB sticks. It's all weird. A sophisticated BIOS malware? I never heard they exist.
Windows update and with some models Ubuntu/fwupdate can update UEFI firmware.
That resets many UEFI settings to defaults. If you had to change settings, you probably have to redo them.
Some even have added extra security to prevent USB boot as then that would not be secure.
User then has to specifically allow USB boot or full USB support.
Well, yes, both circumstances are hard to believe but there may be an answer from the Asus website........?Quote:
Originally Posted by yurad
Have you considered updating or replacing your firmware?Quote:
Update BIOS in BIO/replacing Utility (with EZ Flash)
Since some models are not able to update BIOS in Windows, this article will introduce how to update BIOS in BIOS Utility.
It looks like Asus have a way to do this?
https://www.asus.com/uk/support/faq/1008859/
this is a duplicated post. The real post is below
Big relief! I finally booted from one of my old USB sticks with Ubuntu 17.04. It's a bit old, but still pretty good for copying everything from my home directory and Windows partition. I still think my BIOS is broken. I've never had trouble booting from USB sticks before. Today I had to manually create a boot option. I think I did it exactly the same way as yesterday. But this time I was able to boot.
Thanks for all the help!
I'll take a short break to check the BIOS status. I'll also consider updating the BIOS.
I'd appreciate any advice on how to check the BIOS.
(Once I've sorted out the BIOS issues, I'll try to repair the boot with GRUBE.)
UEFI/BIOS and SSD:
Compare to vendors support site
sudo dmidecode -s bios-version
udisksctl status
inxi -d
Vendors vary greatly on how to update UEFI/BIOS. If older system, you may still have a newer but not recent update available.
Windows often updates UEFI.
Some brands and newer systems can update UEFI from Ubuntu/grub with fwupdate.
https://fwupd.org/
Devices using LVFS for firmware updates
https://fwupd.org/lvfs/devicelist
Some UEFI can even update directly from UEFI. Some need you to download the update file & from within UEFI read that. Must be saved to FAT32 formatted partition as that is all that UEFI reads.
Older BIOS may need BIOS bootable with FreeDOS or similar to run .exe file that has update file inside it. Usually instructions & files on vendors support site.
I restored the boot settings. The problem was that after the failed upgrade to 24.04 (I mentioned it in the second post) my UEFI BIOS went into an invalid mode. The BIOS lost the boot options and could not restore them. I could not boot from USB drives. Sometimes I did boot from flash, but right after a successful boot I could not repeat itagain.
So my conclusion is that during the faulty upgrade (I'll add more information about this below) one of the processes interacted with my legacy UEFI BIOS and left it in this broken mode. Otherwise I can't explain what happened.
I don't know what exactly fixed the BIOS. I kept turning off and on different settings. I tried to create and save new boot options. Sometimes I was able to boot from a flash drive. But it was unreliable. I tried RESET commands in the BIOS, but it didn't work either. I thought my BIOS had hardware issues, and was going to reinstall the firmware as a last trial. But suddenly, after one my iterations, the laptop booted Windows. I immediately checked the BIOS. All boot options were back. I could boot into GRUB and Windows. (I have two efi files on my hard drive, Windows and GRUB. From GRUB I can also boot Windows). Now I can boot from any of my bootable flash drives, just like before.
What will I do if this happens again? Without fiddling with the BIOS settings, I will try resetting the BIOS on the motherboard or reinstalling the firmware. I also saved screenshots of my BIOS settings.
(Just in case, I'll add some details about my faulty upgrade. Before the start I closed all programs except the terminal with "top" open and started the upgrade. Pretty soon I got a popup saying Noble is not responding. Please wait or force quit. The type of popup I got very often on 22.04. I didn't understand what Noble was and opened Firefox to find information. However, the Upgrader window was gone. Maybe I accidentally pressed force quit. I checked in "top" that the updater was missing and opened the GUI updater again. It gave me a big list of updates. I naively thought that the 24.04 upgrade would continue. The updates took a long time. After the updates, I rebooted and encountered this BIOS problem. When I was able to boot Ubuntu again, I found no changes in the interface compared to 22.04, although Ubuntu said its version was 24.04. The upgrade went wrong. I don't like the reliability of the Ubuntu GUI updater anymore. To fix the upgrade, I used "apt dist-upgrade" in the terminal)