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Win7/Manjaro Dual Boot freezes at mainboard screen

Anonymous Fri 19 Aug 2022 14:09:58 No.1249548 View View Reply Original Report

Quoted By: >>1249843 >>1249988 >>1250008

I had Windows 7 on one SSD and decided to install Linux on a seperate SSD for a dual boot setup and installed Manjaro. Worked fine for two or three start-ups, but the next time after shutting down out of Manjaro, my PC got stuck at the mainboard screen. No GRUB appeared and I couldn't access the BIOS menu to access a drive. It just... stuck. Unplugging the Linux SSD let me at least boot into Windows again.
I have an Asus Z97-P motherboard, secure boot got disabled before installing Linux. I had OpenSUSE installed before Manjaro, one root partition and one home partition, the latter had been formatted in XFS. I've kept the home partition for Manjaro.
Any ideas what to do? Like I said, when the Linux SSD is plugged in, the PC freezes at the mainboard screen and I can't enter BIOS. So I basically can do nothing when that drive is plugged in. I'm a bit stumped.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 20 Aug 2022 02:28:33 No.1249843 Report

Quoted By: >>1249980 >>1250028

>>1249548

Did you leave the windows drive in when you installed manjaro? You needed to as Windows doesn't work well with linux at the best of times so always start with windows installed, then linux.

You could try setting a sata port to hotswappable. With the linux drive unattached, boot to windows or a portable linux, attach the linux drive, backup you home partition, then wipe the drive and reinstall.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 20 Aug 2022 11:46:14 No.1249980 Report

Quoted By: >>1249995

>>1249843
The Windows system was an old one and present when I installed Manjaro. The dual boot worked for a couple of days, could boot into Windows and Manjaro, no problem. I wonder what triggered all of this. Manjaro shut down really fast, the PC usually turned off before KDE was truly closed.

So, booting into windows or another linux, attaching the SSD then and wiping the disk for a fresh install is my only chance? Bummer.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 20 Aug 2022 12:20:27 No.1249988 Report

Quoted By: >>1249991

>>1249548
>what to do?
- Make sure you're on UEFI
(- use MBR2GPT if you aren't already)
- Make sure there's only one ESP in total, across every single one of your devices
- once windows is working, boot from a linux USB and install EFI grub
- use the motherboard boot menu (or your OS's "reboot into..." menu) to dual-boot

Optionally, but for extra credit:
- stop dual booting, and use WSL

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 20 Aug 2022 12:38:41 No.1249991 Report

Quoted By: >>1249995

>>1249988
>UEFI
yep
>ESP
no idea what that is, desu. Looking it up I only found stuff about microcontrollers and Arduino like boards
>Linux USB and EFI grub
did that
>Dual boot
used Grub for that, because both windows and manjaro was displayed

>WSL
I'm on Win 7 and wanted to use that system in a dual boot to slowly phase out my windows usage.

Also, this probably is more a solution for a completely new setup and not my problem, because with the Linux SSD plugged in I can't even access the BIOS menu

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 20 Aug 2022 12:47:49 No.1249995 Report

Quoted By: >>1249997 >>1250006

>>1249980
Pretty sure no one said anything about fresh install being your only chance before you did just now.

The main takeaway should be hotswapping your drive so you can at least boot into a system to moount the drive, scan it, check the logs since you said you couldn't do anything with the drive attached and this will at least get you booted into an OS and see if the drive functions in an OS.

I was about to hit send when you just now replied saying
>>1249991
>>>ESP
>no idea what that is, desu.

That's why I asked if the windows drive was attached when you installed linux. If it wasn't attached there might be two floating around. That's not good. That you don't know says simpler solutions are probably better for you now.

>because with the Linux SSD plugged in I can't even access the BIOS menu

Which is why I said in my first post, unplug it, make a port hot swappable in BIOS, boot into linux.

A fresh install takes you 30 minutes and trying to diagnose someone else's IT problem on the internet can take hours...you do the math.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 20 Aug 2022 12:54:27 No.1249997 Report

Quoted By: >>1249998 >>1250006

>>1249995
Ah, okay.
Again, the Windows drive was present when I installed Linux. I could also access the Windows drive and an old NTFS HDD under Manjaro. Dual booting went well for two days.

I will hotswap the Linux drive, look if I can find something, and probably will make a fresh install after all, because I haven't really done that much on Linux yet.

Thanks for your time, anon. I'm still wondering why that happened and what exactly is responsible for the PC freezing at the mainboard screen and how to prevent that in the future. I'll look more into ESP.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 20 Aug 2022 12:55:41 No.1249998 Report

Quoted By: >>1250006

>>1249997
To add to this, the install menu of Linux also detected the Windows drive and the other HDD.
But yes, a fresh install is the easiest solution, I guess.

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO 6E89A2AD-020D-4D28-8206-FAAD0593 (...).jpg, 120KiB, 1280x686

Anonymous Sat 20 Aug 2022 13:28:44 No.1250006 Report

Quoted By: >>1250014 >>1250446

>>1249998
>>1249997
>>1249995
The way you find how many ESPs you have is not by guessing, it's by using gparted/diskmgmt to look for them.

You should have exactly one, if there's any more, delete the extra ones.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 20 Aug 2022 13:31:28 No.1250008 Report

Quoted By: >>1250014

>>1249548
>So I basically can do nothing when that drive is plugged in.
Could be that the drive has failed and isn't responding to commands.
So the first thing to test is if the drive actually works at all.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sat 20 Aug 2022 13:46:41 No.1250014 Report

Quoted By:

>>1250006
>>1250008
Will do both of that and go on from there.
Thanks for all your help.

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO F72EEACA-1704-47F3-AF12-D89BC6EA (...).jpg, 12KiB, 260x145

Anonymous Sat 20 Aug 2022 14:20:53 No.1250028 Report

Quoted By:

>>1249843
>You could try setting a sata port to hotswappable.
SATA ports are always hotswappable, this BIOS setting is more like a warning to the OS that this is going to happen. If you're not accessing or mounting anything on the disk, there's no problem hotswapping it without this flag set. Done this a bunch of times to reboot the disk and enable ATA security so I can wipe it.

Obviously, exactly like USB storage( which is also electrically-hotpluggable and also not always logically-hotpluggable), if you do this while the OS is accessing the disk, the OS will become sad. But it's part of the SATA design that you can always do this and it won't damage the hardware.

Pic related, it's a SATA connector. See how all the ground pins are longer: this is so they always mate first and establish an equal ground potential so the power and data connections can safely hotplug.

Anonymous

View Same Google ImgOps iqdb SauceNAO 1572655296731.jpg, 6KiB, 240x240

Anonymous Sun 21 Aug 2022 13:02:53 No.1250446 Report

Quoted By: >>1250451

>>1250006
Hello anon, I want to give an update and have another question, if you don't mind.
The Linux SSD still works and can be accessed from another system. Everything was there. Now, about that EPS thing...
My Windows SSD looks a bit like your screenshot, with a 500 MB EFI Sytem Partition.
The Linux SSD had a partition called Boot/EPS. Does that mean I had one too many?
For now, I've wiped the Linux drive and will start fresh. If those two partitions were the problem, how can I avoid it the next time? I had the Windows drive plugged in, active and present during the time I installed Linux. I wanted to have GRUB with both Linux and Windows selectable. That worked for a couple of start-ups, until it didn't any more. Something I did wrong during the install?
Thanks for all your help.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 21 Aug 2022 13:26:07 No.1250451 Report

Quoted By: >>1250455 >>1250456

>>1250446
>Does that mean I had one too many?
Yes.
You're only supposed to have one for the whole computer, and what happens when you have two is not defined in the spec, i.e. any number of weird things could happen.
>I had the Windows drive plugged in, active and present during the time I installed Linux.
It's supposed to detect the ESP and add its files to it.
>If those two partitions were the problem, how can I avoid it the next time?
- make sure you have legacy/CSM switched off in the BIOS, to rule out the scenario where you have WINLOAD on the ESP but then install a Grub MBR and VBR to the other device and end up with a machine that boots UEFI and legacy simultaneously
- look and see if Linux creates a duplicate ESP, and if it does, try booting off a Linux USB, deleting the second ESP then running startup repair. You could also try mounting them both, moving all the files from the second one into the first one, then unmounting them and deleting the second one.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 21 Aug 2022 13:55:23 No.1250455 Report

Quoted By: >>1250457

>>1250451
Right, I think I got all of this, aside from the last part:
>You could also try mounting them both, moving all the files from the second one into the first one, then unmounting them and deleting the second one.
Do you mean moving the files from the second (Linux) ESP into the first (Windows) ESP? Not sure if I got that right, sounds weird, desu.

But if I got the rest right, I only want the ESP on the Windows drive and none on the Linux drive. I think Legacy should be switched off, but I'll make extra sure when I do the fresh install.

Again, thanks a lot for your help and your time.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 21 Aug 2022 14:11:13 No.1250456 Report

Quoted By: >>1250459 >>1250462

>>1250451
Oh, last question, more for comprehension:
GRUB/Linux is supposed to use the Windows bootloader for booting, right? I think I remember there was an option if I wanted a boot partition and I did so. In that case, I shouldn't do that, right?
Could it be that this option made everything wonky?

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 21 Aug 2022 14:12:40 No.1250457 Report

Quoted By: >>1250485

>>1250455
>Do you mean moving the files from the second (Linux) ESP into the first (Windows) ESP?
Yes. Don't think of it as a "windows ESP", it's your computer's ESP where all your bootloaders and their data files live.

The EFI menu entries don't refer to bootloaders by absolute device paths, they use paths that are basically
<whatever partition is the ESP>\Microsoft\Boot\Winload.efi , so a) this is why two ESPs confuses everything, and b) why it's okay to merge a second ESP into the first one.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 21 Aug 2022 14:15:17 No.1250459 Report

Quoted By: >>1250485

>>1250456
>GRUB/Linux is supposed to use the Windows bootloader for booting
That's what it does on legacy, I honestly can't tell you for UEFI, I don't want to just make stuff up.

Whenever I've done dual-boot on EFI, I've just had whatever OS's loader boot its own OS, then used the computer's own boot menu to choose that loader.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 21 Aug 2022 14:17:53 No.1250462 Report

Quoted By: >>1250485

>>1250456
>GRUB/Linux is supposed to use the Windows bootloader for booting, right?
According to google, it never leaves UEFI land until after Linux is loaded and booted, so it just exits and runs bootmgfw.efi (windows' efi bootloader), which proceeds as if it had booted first and loads windows.

Anonymous

Anonymous Sun 21 Aug 2022 15:13:48 No.1250485 Report

Quoted By:

>>1250457
>>1250459
>>1250462
Alright, I think I got the gist of it. Will try in the coming days with everything I've learnt today.
Thank you anon, I hope you have a good next week!

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