Can't boot Cachy on an old laptop that has no UEFI bios

Issues & Assistance
1

I’ve installed CachyOS on other PCs, but when I tried to install it onto this one laptop, it fails when installing it with Limine, so I installed with Grub. No errors, successful install, however, when I reboot and remove the live USB, the bios can’t load the hard drive, it can see it in the bios, but it can’t load it with CachyOS. I did have Linux Mint running previously on it and that was working fine, so I don’t understand where I’ve gone wrong, my suspicion is that CachyOS is trying to install for a UEFI environment. I did try chroot into it via the live USB, but I couldn’t rebuild the boot loader.

I tried following the wiki: Wiki - GRUB Bios

But I couldn’t resolve the issue, it’s like the Bios can’t see/mount the HDD, here are some screen caps of the partitions and drive after installation.

I get the following during bootup:

boot failed. P1-HGST “model/serial etc..”

I’ve used Linux before, but I’m certainly not a pro, can anyone help me with it?

2

Hi @UltimateGattai

Welcome to the forum. :confetti_ball:

What partition table did you use for the disk during installation?

This step needs to be done manually with a partition manager.

The default installation uses UEFI — whether or not you use GRUB doesn’t matter here.

The key question is: GPT (UEFI) or MBR/MSDOS?

3

Thanks for the welcome , and sry in advance for my bad english ^^
I’m not really sure i understand everything , but as few as i know i decided to try with grub , and now it tell me to create a new partition table , so that should be that i supposed !
Thanks for the reply / help

message say :

Creat a new partition table (type: gpt) on ‘/dev/sda’

job: creat new partition table on device ‘/dev/sda’

command: sfdisk --wipe=always /dev/sda

as i understand , i need to launch this command in cachyos for manually wiping partition and after that installing cachy ?

4

Assuming a fresh install, no dual boot:

It is even simpler than i suggested.

Set your BIOS to Legacy/CSM, boot the live ISO and run the installer.

Calamares will automatically detect the boot mode and install as MBR/BIOS.

Just reboot when done.

The only exception is if your disk still has a GPT partition table from a previous install — in that case, open GParted first and set the partition table to msdos before launching the installer.

5

Yeah it’s an old laptop , it’s my crashtest ^^
Appreciate this fact a lot ! i def need to learn more about those , but i kinda got it ! Thanks :slight_smile:

6

I erased/formatted the disk and let the installer set it up with the “Erase Disk” option and just left it at defaults.

7

I used Cachy-chroot and it has

/devsdb1 boot * BIOS boot

/devsdb2 EFI

8

I will try this ! i actually need to reinstall w7 , i can’t boot anything actually on the laptop , i will reinstall quickly a windows and get back instantly on the cachy after that