Hello, I’m having issues booting any and all Linux distros, whether using systemdboot or grub. I’ll go through the installer and everything acts as though it’s installed fine but when I reboot into the system the computer either goes into grub repair or to the Dell system testing. I have tried completely wiping the nvme ssd (boot drive) and installing from a fresh drive and that will boot with some installations but won’t with others. I notice that if I go to the boot menu and select the GRUB entry for CachyOS it will go to the Dell system testing (indicating it could not boot from that selection) but if I select the partition with the boot loader rather than the boot loader entry it will boot fine. This is a “works for now” situation, but I like to have dual boot and currently don’t know if installing another OS or even trying to put my windows installation back on the SSD will make the entire thing just not work again.
I am guessing that the partition table is jacked up, but how do i fix that? The laptop even still shows the systemdboot options for endeavourOS and Opensuse if I try to do an installation using systemdboot. Those haven’t been installed for a long time and the SSD has been completely wiped out of all partitions multiple times since then.
How does one, using either their CachyOS installation or the Live Installer, compeltely clear out their SSD and make it like a fresh SSD with a completely new partition table?
Sorry, most ArchWiki pages are WAY above my head, and I don’t see an option referencing NVRAM in efibootmgr --help… I don’t even know what NVRAM is (about to google a bit more).
Would sudo ms-sys -z make it start fresh? am I understanding that correctly?
Basically I don’t want to destroy the hardware but want to completely clear it out to start 100% fresh.
Would the NVRAM hold the original Windows key? how do I clean it with efibootmgr?
This is what efibootmgr outputs right now:
BootCurrent: 001D
Timeout: 2 seconds
BootOrder: 001D,0014,0020
Boot0000* Windows Boot Manager HD(2,GPT,0d1a746a-3d3b-4afc-9654-2c950d0fec6a,0x40800,0x145000)/\EFI\Microsoft
\Boot\bootmgfw.efi57494e444f5753000100000088000000780000004200430044004f0042004a004500430054003d007b0039006400
6500610038003600320063002d0035006300640064002d0034006500370030002d0061006300630031002d006600330032006200330034
003400640034003700390035007d0000005f000100000010000000040000007fff0400
Boot0005* Linux Boot Manager HD(5,GPT,2416729f-d29d-42c5-8586-a0fa20d8e88b,0x58e11800,0x600000)/\EFI\system
d\systemd-bootx64.efi
Boot0014* UEFI: ST1000LM035-1RK172, Partition 2 PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x17,0x0)/Sata(0,65535,0)/HD(2,GPT,3d1501d6-4
f47-4379-9077-f83c4b237e87,0x40800,0x5d550800)0000424f
Boot001D* UEFI: PNY CS2241 1TB SSD, Partition 1 HD(1,GPT,13bdb9ec-d7f6-4294-81a4-57f38c945b23,0x1000,0x400000)
/\EFI\boot\bootx64.efi0000424f
Boot0020* UEFI: ST1000LM035-1RK172, Partition 1 HD(1,GPT,ef5aecba-513f-4f83-9c9e-2c6ae7cfbbfe,0x5d591000,0x100
000)/\EFI\boot\bootx64.efi0000424f
I’ve tried the entire disk install, it had the same result,
So far the output of efibootmgr only had one dead entry that I didn’t want in there (linux boot mgr), I took that out for now… but when it has a grub boot mgr it fails to boot even though just booting the partition that has grub works
Funny thing is selecting the grub entry doesn’t boot and selecting the partition with grub boots grub…
For now I’m going to try just restoring my original SSD backup from when I went from a 128gb SSD to a 1tb SSD (used gnome-disk-utility) and just installing CachyOS and maybe endeavouros alongside windows. Back in the time I made that backup things were installing properly, I just need to always choose grub I think.
I think gnome-disk-utility uses dd for those backups and copies the entire disk including the mbr.
When installing a fresh install of CachyOS I did the little option to create a new GPT partition table. That cleared up the issues. Guess it was just a messed up partition table but odd that it wouldn’t just be fixed by the “erase disk” option.
