Solved trying to install from usb, grub failing?

[bjtosh]

My wife was going to throw out an old laptop, I thought I would try Lubuntu on it. This is a Toshiba Portege, with dual core X64 processor and 3GB of RAM. I plugged it in and confirmed that it boots to Windows 10 so everything appears to be running. I downloaded Lubuntu 24.04.3 and Rufus, make a USB drive, and tried booting. I see "Loading Grub" and "Welcome to Grub" on the screen, then the screen goes black and in about 10 seconds I get those messages again, the screen goes black, and it keeps repeating. From what I've seen on videos it appears to be crashing or somehow initiating a reboot before it displays the Grub menu.

 

[KGIII]

There's an issue with Rufus at the moment. I'm not familiar with the program; I just know that I read about this a couple of days ago. The fix was to use 'dd' mode when writing the .iso file. How you do that, I do not know. I've never actually used it.

You can also just use BalenaEtcher. That's pretty quick and easy, and usually has good results.

 

[Condobloke]

I'll second the use of Balena Etcher.

 

[bjtosh]

I've been doing more experimenting. Also in the box of recycling that my wife had is her old Dell laptop, a more recent machine with i8xxx series processor. I changed boot order and disabled secure boot, it booted to Lubuntu very quickly. I poked around and Linux couldn't find the hard drive in the machine, maybe I had removed it previously. That machine also doesn't have a battery so it isn't a very good candidate to becoming a usable Linux computer without spending some money on it. That seems to indicate that the USB stick is working correctly.

Next I pulled out my old Toshiba laptop that I used for travel. It is about the same era as the Toshiba from my wife but is a different model with different dual core processor and different bios, same amount of RAM. It did the same behavior as the other Toshiba- try to load grub, black screen, try to load grub, black screen, etc.

The last bit of junk from the closet is my old Dell Latitude that I was using until 2 years ago. It has a pretty fast dual core processor for the era and 4GB of RAM. It boots to Windows 10. I rearranged its boot priority and it gets stuck in the same grub groundhog day repeating as the 2 Toshiba machines. I look through every entry in its extensive bios looking for things I might have read about. I disabled fast boot and now it must take 5 minutes to boot, but it's still stuck in the looping it just takes 5 minutes per loop cycle.

So far grub is batting 1 out of 4 on old hardware. I'm not going to try it on my 2 new computers or my old desktop.

 

[KGIII]

I poked around and Linux couldn't find the hard drive in the machine, maybe I had removed it previously.

Look for RAID settings in the BIOS. I forget the variety of the names but it might be called Intel RST or similar. I think there's a couple other names they use.

 

[bjtosh]

Look for RAID settings in the BIOS. I forget the variety of the names but it might be called Intel RST or similar. I think there's a couple other names they use.

The 2 older Toshiba computers have relatively few bios settings, I posted a screenshot of one of them. The only boot or hard drive setting I found was the boot order.

The Dell Latitude has a much more extensive bios but I didn't find anything that I thought was relevant. I'll try those again in a few days.

 

[KGIII]

The only boot or hard drive setting I found was the boot order.

That's not good. That Intel RST thing is generally why Linux may not see the internal storage. So, maybe you did remove the drive? If that's the case, I mean, you can still use Linux in the live mode.

Moving to a new OS can be frustrating and there's a learning curve. Let's see what other members chime in with. We can probably get you sorted with enough time and effort. Collectively, we're pretty good at this.

 

[Condobloke]

G'day bjtosh, Welcome to Linux.org

I reckon you wife was tossing it out for good reason !....did you ask why she was tossing?....may have just been unused and surplus to needs.

Make another usb stick, or you can use the same one if you don't have another

This time, use Balena etcher to make the usb bootable

Use Linux Mint as the OS

Tell me that worked for you.

 

[Condobloke]

I dual booted Ubuntu 24.04 LTS on my HP ProBook alongside Windows and Grub keeps failing(sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't)

The above from : https://www.linux.org/threads/windows-keeps-failing-after-dual-boot.58434/

The reason I posted that was....is this a coincidence that we have two instances of Ubuntu 24.04 and some unknown drama with grub......maybe....maybe not. Worth a try on Linux Mint

 

[bjtosh]

I reckon you wife was tossing it out for good reason !....did you ask why she was tossing?....may have just been unused and surplus to needs.

The first one was about 15 years old. I don't recall why she replaced it, maybe just old. Then I bought her a Dell that she got wet and that killed it, we don't have it anymore. Then I bought her another Dell and it had battery problems, twice, so I replaced it with a Lenovo that she is still using. That Dell is the only one of these 4 that successfully booted Lubuntu. I have 2 old laptops of my own that I've replaced because they are old. I also replaced my desktop a couple of years ago. That's how I ended up with 4 old machines to play with today.

I'll try your other suggestions tomorrow.

 

[bjtosh]

I just tried Mint xfce in the smallest of the computers (matching the screenshot in the first post). I put the files on a USB using Rufus and it booted into grub. Grub appeared to be locked up because I couldn't select any options but if I just hit enter it eventually booted into Mint. The boot off of the USB took a long time with a lot of messages sent to the screen, the first screen of messages looked ominous because they were errors and "couldn't find" type messages but after it booted to a desktop it appeared to work. Screen brightness and speaker volume were set all the way down so that was weird. It connected to my wifi and played a video on youtube. The file manager saw the SSD in the machine so everything seems to be working. After awhile I found how to get into terminal and I poked around a little bit. (I have a lot of experience with Unix from over 40 years ago.) I couldn't change the desktop appearance, I don't know if that is because I'm running a trial from a USB. I wonder if I could actually install it on a small USB and not bother with the internal hard drive.

Now I'll have to play with trying Mint on the other 3 old computers.

Edit- I tried the second Toshiba and it was a bit better behaved on boot but there was still a message about an unclean file system. It won't allow picking a desktop style and it can't see the SSD in the computer. I used Rufus on this attempt at Mint because I already had it and it didn't require an installation. I'll try Etcher next and see how it compares.

 

[KGIII]

I wonder if I could actually install it on a small USB and not bother with the internal hard drive.

You can, but it will run slowly. USB-C will be quite a bit faster but your older computers aren't going to have that.

A neat thing about doing that is that you can then run that same OS on different computers. You just tell 'em to boot to USB and the OS should work. All the important drivers are in the kernel, so you'll get pretty good results with it.

 

[bjtosh]

You can, but it will run slowly. USB-C will be quite a bit faster but your older computers aren't going to have that.

A neat thing about doing that is that you can then run that same OS on different computers. You just tell 'em to boot to USB and the OS should work. All the important drivers are in the kernel, so you'll get pretty good results with it.

I forgot about the USB 2.0 limitation. One of the 4 old computers I'm playing with might be new enough for USB 3.

Edit- I tried Etcher to make the USB. It was more trouble than Rufus because Windows didn't like it, I had to change some security settings before it would run. (I feel funny saying that on a Linux forum) I can't tell that the resulting USB booted any differently than the one made with Rufus.

 

[KGIII]

One of the 4 old computers I'm playing with might be new enough for USB 3.

They're usually color-coded. USB 3.0 is usually blue.

I can't tell that the resulting USB booted any differently than the one made with Rufus.

I've no clue about Windows' security settings. The last Windows OS I used was Vista.

Have you tried the USB in the computers that were having issues booting? Remember, that it can take a while for the system to read the USB and take even longer to boot. It may show a black screen for longer than you might expect. What's happening behind the scenes is that the operating system is loading everything into RAM. It's rather RAM-intensive because everything is running in said RAM. All the necessary bits, and subsequently anything you open, will be loaded into RAM. Older RAM is slower than newer RAM.

 

[Brickwizard]

some machines are sensitive as to which USB port you use, always try to use the primary port [usually the one nearest the power supply]

 

[bjtosh]

Have you tried the USB in the computers that were having issues booting? Remember, that it can take a while for the system to read the USB and take even longer to boot. It may show a black screen for longer than you might expect. What's happening behind the scenes is that the operating system is loading everything into RAM. It's rather RAM-intensive because everything is running in said RAM. All the necessary bits, and subsequently anything you open, will be loaded into RAM. Older RAM is slower than newer RAM.

Yes, all 4 machines booted from the USB prepared with Mint XFCE using Etcher. Earlier the only machine I tried it on also booted from the USB prepared by Rufus. Three of the machines are too old to have USB 3, the fourth one likely does have USB 3, but I think my USB drive is probably USB 2 anyway. They all take a good amount of time to boot.

Years ago I installed new SSD in 3 of the machines and today 2 of them will still boot to Windows and under Linux I can see the drives. One of the machines has had its SSD removed. The fourth of the machines would not boot from its SSD. I had an old cable TV box in the garage ready for electronic recycling and it contained a 1 TB spinning hard drive so I put that drive in the machine that wouldn't boot from its SSD. Linux could see the contents of the drive and I went ahead and installed Linux on the drive. It takes 1 minute 45 sec to boot to the desktop on that slow machine using a spinning drive.

 

[KGIII]

Yes, all 4 machines booted from the USB prepared with Mint XFCE using Etcher.

Excellent.

Welcome to Linux. There's a learning curve. Good search terms will help you when you have issues or want to learn something new. Otherwise, this forum is full of people who are eager to help people come to grips with the OS change.

Remember, Linux is not Windows. They're very different beasts. Your familiarity with Unix will help you quite a bit. (I too used Unix a great deal, long before I used Linux.)

It takes 1 minute 45 sec to boot to the desktop on that slow machine using a spinning drive.

If you're bored and want to know your startup time according to the computer, run this command:

systemd-analyze

If you want details of the boot process:

systemd-analyze blame