Could someone help me recovering my system after a BIOS disaster?

Issues & Assistance
1

Yesterday, I tried to update my BIOS, which sent me into a loop booting into BIOS forever. The whole story is over in that thread.

The relevant system specs are:

  • MSI B650-S PRO WIFI Motherboard
  • Ryzen 8700G CPU (and I am using the integrated gfx card at the moment)
  • rEFInd boot manager

After removing nearly all the hardware (drives and the discrete GPU), I was at least able to enter the BIOS again, so I reverted back that change and I’m now on version 7E26v1J from the official website.

The boot order looks okay to me (please ignore the BIOS Version in the screenshot, that was yesterday):

MSI_SnapShot_bootorder
MSI_SnapShot_bootorder1024×768 163 KB

but when I hit F11 to enter the boot manager, I see no drive (except for an USB stick if there is one).

My suspicion: the boot loader was damaged somehow, so I might probably need to fix that. And I guess I will have to do so with efibootmgr. But I could also be totally wrong on that.

I was able to boot into a live Cachy with a Ventoy stick and I am writing from that system at the moment.

The only drive still in the machine is a NVME containing the ESP, my root partition, my /home and an /apps partition:

lsblk -f
NAME       FSTYPE   FSVER           LABEL      UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
loop0      squashfs 4.0                                                                   0   100% /run/archiso/airootfs
sda                                                                                                
├─sda1     exfat    1.0             Ventoy     F31D-4CE1                                           
│ ├─ventoy iso9660  Joliet Extensio COS_202511 2025-11-29-16-07-07-00                              
│ └─sda1   exfat    1.0             Ventoy     F31D-4CE1                                           
└─sda2     vfat     FAT16           VTOYEFI    3105-B091                                           
zram0      swap     1               zram0      ec8b4d30-74b3-4f4c-9e3a-c89627e2b6b0                [SWAP]
nvme0n1                                                                                            
├─nvme0n1p1
│          vfat     FAT32           BOOT       C817-5774                                           
├─nvme0n1p2
│          swap     1               SWAP       14b5e04a-1c2f-41c2-a2a5-cd9ffe1ec2a0                
├─nvme0n1p3
│          btrfs                    ROOT       0b4778d2-2b54-48a9-a184-b2a951e9335a                
├─nvme0n1p4
│          btrfs                    HOME       8070f09c-85d9-4420-b00e-a941b3a85f83                
└─nvme0n1p5
           btrfs                    APPS       ae032e5c-f8de-4f79-842b-280801eaa772

As you can see, nvme0n1p3 is the root partition, nvme0n1p1 is the ESP and nvme0n1p4 is my /home

Here is the current bugreport: 4185743

When I run cachy-chroot, I already get warnings that I don’t understand (although I guess they come from the fact that /etc/fstab contains more drives than there currently are attached?):

cachy-chroot 
[root@CachyOS liveuser]# cachy-chroot
Info: Found 7 block devices
Info: Found partition: Partition: /dev/sda1: FS: exfat UUID: F31D-4CE1
Info: Found partition: Partition: /dev/sda2: FS: vfat UUID: 3105-B091
Info: Found partition: Partition: /dev/sdb1: FS: vfat UUID: AA97-0100
Info: Found partition: Partition: /dev/nvme0n1p1: FS: vfat UUID: C817-5774
Info: Found partition: Partition: /dev/nvme0n1p3: FS: btrfs UUID: 0b4778d2-2b54-48a9-a184-b2a951e9335a
Info: Found partition: Partition: /dev/nvme0n1p4: FS: btrfs UUID: 8070f09c-85d9-4420-b00e-a941b3a85f83
Info: Found partition: Partition: /dev/nvme0n1p5: FS: btrfs UUID: ae032e5c-f8de-4f79-842b-280801eaa772
✔ Select the block device for the root partition (use arrow keys): · Partition: /dev/nvme0n1p3: FS: btrfs UUID: 0b4
778d2-2b54-48a9-a184-b2a951e9335a
Info: Selected BTRFS partition, mounting and listing subvolumes...
Info: Mounting partition /dev/nvme0n1p3 at /tmp/cachyos-chroot-temp-mount-0b4778d2-2b54-48a9-a184-b2a951e9335a-AmJPH
v with options: []
Info: Unmounting partition at /tmp/cachyos-chroot-temp-mount-0b4778d2-2b54-48a9-a184-b2a951e9335a-AmJPHv
✔ Do you want to use CachyOS BTRFS preset to auto mount root subvolume? · yes
Info: Mounting partition /dev/nvme0n1p3 at /tmp/cachyos-chroot-root-mount-0b4778d2-2b54-48a9-a184-b2a951e9335a-vWciU
q with options: ["-o", "subvolid=2297"]
Info: Mounting additional partitions based on /etc/fstab...
Info: Found 13 entries in /etc/fstab
Info: Mounting partition /dev/nvme0n1p1 at /tmp/cachyos-chroot-root-mount-0b4778d2-2b54-48a9-a184-b2a951e9335a-vWciU
q/boot with options: []
Warning: Partition already mounted: UUID=0b4778d2-2b54-48a9-a184-b2a951e9335a /, skipping...
Info: Mounting partition /dev/nvme0n1p3 at /tmp/cachyos-chroot-root-mount-0b4778d2-2b54-48a9-a184-b2a951e9335a-vWciU
q/root with options: ["-o", "subvolid=257"]
Info: Mounting partition /dev/nvme0n1p3 at /tmp/cachyos-chroot-root-mount-0b4778d2-2b54-48a9-a184-b2a951e9335a-vWciU
q/srv with options: ["-o", "subvolid=258"]
Info: Mounting partition /dev/nvme0n1p3 at /tmp/cachyos-chroot-root-mount-0b4778d2-2b54-48a9-a184-b2a951e9335a-vWciU
q/var/cache with options: ["-o", "subvolid=259"]
Info: Mounting partition /dev/nvme0n1p3 at /tmp/cachyos-chroot-root-mount-0b4778d2-2b54-48a9-a184-b2a951e9335a-vWciU
q/var/tmp with options: ["-o", "subvolid=260"]
Info: Mounting partition /dev/nvme0n1p3 at /tmp/cachyos-chroot-root-mount-0b4778d2-2b54-48a9-a184-b2a951e9335a-vWciU
q/var/log with options: ["-o", "subvolid=261"]
Info: Mounting partition /dev/nvme0n1p4 at /tmp/cachyos-chroot-temp-mount-8070f09c-85d9-4420-b00e-a941b3a85f83-Yhxo9
9 with options: []
Info: Unmounting partition at /tmp/cachyos-chroot-temp-mount-8070f09c-85d9-4420-b00e-a941b3a85f83-Yhxo99
Warning: No subvolume specified in fstab, using root subvolume
Info: Mounting partition /dev/nvme0n1p4 at /tmp/cachyos-chroot-root-mount-0b4778d2-2b54-48a9-a184-b2a951e9335a-vWciU
q/home with options: ["-o", "subvolid=5"]
Info: Mounting partition /dev/nvme0n1p5 at /tmp/cachyos-chroot-temp-mount-ae032e5c-f8de-4f79-842b-280801eaa772-m5dnk
g with options: []
Info: Unmounting partition at /tmp/cachyos-chroot-temp-mount-ae032e5c-f8de-4f79-842b-280801eaa772-m5dnkg
Warning: No subvolume specified in fstab, using root subvolume
Info: Mounting partition /dev/nvme0n1p5 at /tmp/cachyos-chroot-root-mount-0b4778d2-2b54-48a9-a184-b2a951e9335a-vWciU
q/apps with options: ["-o", "subvolid=5"]
Warning: Invalid fs_spec in fstab, skipping...
Warning: Device UUID=a75b588d-76cf-42e1-b8eb-d2069050cfcf not found, skipping mounting...
Warning: Device UUID=4c288d62-bc3c-428c-a1e9-cd1c3feebb0b not found, skipping mounting...
Info: Finished mounting additional partitions
? Do you want to mount additional partitions? (y/n) ›

So: do you people think we can fix this machine together?

I know it’s probably not the right time because of new year and I promise I will be as patient as possible so you guys can enjoy the festivities. If it takes a week to fix the machine, so be it. I just don’t want to reinstall it all from scratch, that would be a nightmare.

If you need any more info, I will gladly provide that of course.

2

First I would successfully flash your BIOS (if that’s a possible issue at all). It is not uncommon to lose all entries in the ESP when flashing your BIOS. Often the bios setup will reprobe and identify Windows, but nothing else.
Then run chroot, run grub-install, limine-install or whatever equivalent for whatever bootloader you use.

If you can do those two things, things are probably good.

3

Inside the Chroot

Ensure rEFInd is installed (it likely already is): pacman -Syu refind
Run the installer: refind-install
This is the simplest and most common usage. It will:
Detect your ESP (mounted at /boot in the chroot).
Copy rEFInd files to /boot/EFI/refind/ (or the standard location).
Install necessary filesystem drivers (based on your /boot filesystem).
Create or update the UEFI NVRAM boot entry using efibootmgr.

No options are usually needed for standard setups. when you bios update it wipes uefi nvram and this procedure should fix that.

Hopefully that will help

4

Thanks very much for the detailed walkthrough. Here’s the output of refind-install from inside the chroot:

root@CachyOS boot]# refind-install
ShimSource is none
Installing rEFInd on Linux....
ESP was found at /boot using vfat
Found rEFInd installation in /boot/EFI/refind; upgrading it.
Copied rEFInd binary files

Notice: Backed up existing icons directory as icons-backup.
Existing refind.conf file found; copying sample file as refind.conf-sample
to avoid overwriting your customizations.

Creating new NVRAM entry
rEFInd is set as the default boot manager.
Existing //boot/refind_linux.conf found; not overwriting.

Installation has completed successfully.

So you think I should be able to reboot now and all is fine?

5

Can I invite you to a beer or something? You just saved my life. After the refind-install from chroot and a reboot, the system sent me into an emergency mode for some reason. I remembered that I had removed all the drives and my graphics card, so I put them all back into the machine, started it and everything works fine now.

The lesson I learned today was

when you bios update it wipes uefi nvram and this procedure should fix that.

A million thanks to you! I wish you all the best for 2026!

6

Glad everything is working. Happy New Year !

:+1: