Hi there! I am sorry but I am stuck.
I have a dual boot old machine with windows 8 and Manjaro (openbox). All was working perfectly until I wanted to boot an old edition of manjaro I had on an old usb stick. I modified the bios settings to boot from the usb stick. It was not able to boot since the usb stick was encripted. When I wanted to revert to my dual-boot installation, loading from my main HD, it won’t boot anymore. I can see two partitions to boot (on the BIOS): windows and Manjaro. Windows is ok, Manjaro gives a black screen (it won’t load grub). I usually dual booted with grub.
This is my partition scheme:
[manjaro@manjaro Desktop]$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda
Disk /dev/sda: 447,13 GiB, 480103981056 bytes, 937703088 sectors
Disk model: Intenso SSD Sata
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 6DA1C675-CD49-45AF-AF51-ADE13611139F
Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sda1 2048 616447 614400 300M Windows recovery environment
/dev/sda2 616448 821247 204800 100M EFI System
/dev/sda3 821248 1083391 262144 128M Microsoft reserved
/dev/sda4 1083392 442370047 441286656 210,4G Microsoft basic data
/dev/sda5 899813376 937703054 37889679 18,1G Linux swap
/dev/sda6 442370048 899074047 456704000 217,8G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda7 899074048 899813375 739328 361M Microsoft basic data
Partition table entries are not in disk order.
Hi Brahma, i did revert the bios to the initial settings, but it won’t load grub and stays in a black screen. If I remember well I installed grub on a separate partition.
Also, when I booted straight to windows, there was a scary screen saying that windows was repairing the installation… probably windows messed up the partitions?
Hi Brahma, thank you!
Yes, before the accident, I used Grub to boot Manjaro and Windows 8. I don’t remember where grub was installed (maybe in /dev/sda2, which says EFI System, or in /dev/sda6 Linux filesystem). Please see my first post with the output of fdisk -l and inxi if they can give some more info.
In BIOS I modified the boot order, in order to have the system boot from the USB drive. Trying many times, I probably turned on and of also the SECURE BOOT, and eventually booted Windows 8, which gave a screen indicating it was “repairing” the installation.
Any suggestion will be very appreciated! Thank you!
so is secure boot disabled now? …
is fastboot disabled in windows?
and you changed the boot order, thats probably the issue … select to boot manjaro as first in boot options in bios
do you have some grub error during booting like grub not found, or grub error … any kind of message during booting?
Hi Erim, thank you so much! Yes, I tried both partitions, “Manjaro (P0: Intenso)” and “P0: intenso”. The stay in a black screen, with fans running. No hint of the grub.
If I put “Windows boot manager”, it works, i.e. it boots into Windows, with no GRUB and no option to boot linux.
Hi Brahma, thank you very much!
Yes, secure boot is disabled. Fast boot in windows is disabled as well. I tried to boot Manjaro as first option in bios: it won’t boot. No messages on the screen: black screen and fans running.
maybe the windows repairing that you mentioned somehow corrupted grub … so prepare manjaro usb, boot into manjaro installation again, then boot into the usb, connect to internet, chroot: sudo manjaro-chroot -a
check logs from the failed boot: journalctl -b-1 -p4 --no-pager
CD boots first, if no cd in drive it’ll boot to next option:
win boot manager, since there IS a win it won’t boot the next option:
manjaro
Move manjaro to the top (for info: grub, like the win bootloader, is installed on efi partition sda2) and try if you can boot. If that works you can leave it like that or put CD back on top if you use your cd drive for booting iso:
Thank you all for your suggestions. I was not able to solve the issue, but found a strange workaround, which is far from optimal.
If I press F10 immediately after turning on the laptop, I have a BIOS window and I select Manjaro P0 intenso partition, I then boot straight to the GRUB, and everything works fine.
If I program the BIOS to boot from the Manjaro P0 Intenso partition, it does not boot and stays on a black screen. This happens even if I try to boot from a USB stick: if I program the BIOS to boot from the USB stick, save settings and exit, when booting it stays on a black screen. If I select the usb pendrive pressing F10 when I switch on the laptop, I am able to boot.
This is very strange! Possibly some error on the BIOS?
Here are my bios settings, I really don’t know what to edit!
Hi Nachlese, thanks! Yes, I will try it.
Do you recommend reinstalling grub even knowing that I was not able to boot to a working USB stick with Manjaro via BIOS (only after pressing F10 at startup and directly selecting the USB stick)?
I booted into Linux (by pressing F10 and selecting the working partition - which gave me GRUB), and updated the system. I saw it updated also GRUB, do you think I should manually reinstall it? If yes, which tutorial do you recommend me to use?
Maybe something zapped or corrupted part of my bios and I need to update it as well?