I have been using Linux and Mint for 5-6 years, and have never previously had a problem with installation and GRUB.
Today I installed linux Mint 22 Wilma on my 12 year old Dell XPS L502X laptop. Install went well, but I CANNOT BOOT from the HD. grub doesn’t run, and I get a Black screen with “Operation system not found” message.
I have tried a few online search recommendations I found, with no success.
Here’s what works: I created a USB with “Super Grub2 Disk” … this allows me to boot from the UsB and then boot the Mint 22 from HDD. Mint runs perfectly once I’m in but I don’t want to be booting grub off a flash drive.
Very frustrating … I’m at a loss. Thanks in advance for any help.
Stanley James
PS. Just as a note … I have a second system set up as Multiboot with 5-6 Linux versions running fine. I installed Mint 22 in a partition on that system and it boots just fine with now 7 distros.
You may have already tried each of these, but this is what Copilot said to try.
It sounds like you’re having a frustrating time with your Linux Mint installation. Here are a few steps you can try to resolve the issue:
Check BIOS Settings: Ensure that your hard drive is set as the primary boot device. You can access the BIOS by pressing the F2 key (or another key specified by your laptop) during startup.
Repair GRUB: Boot from your Linux Mint installation media (USB or DVD) and select the “Try Linux Mint” option. Once you’re in the live session, open a terminal and run the following commands to repair GRUB:
sudo mount /dev/sdXn /mnt
sudo grub-install --boot-directory=/mnt/boot /dev/sdX
sudo update-grub
Replace /dev/sdXn with your Linux partition and /dev/sdX with your hard drive.
Check for Hardware Issues: Sometimes, hardware issues can cause boot problems. Make sure your hard drive is properly connected and functioning.
Reinstall Linux Mint: If all else fails, you might want to try reinstalling Linux Mint. Sometimes a fresh installation can resolve boot issues.
Been awhile since I seen this message. The last time I saw it, I believe Secure Boot was not set in BIOS. The latest Mint probable install a EFI partition which I think requires Secure Boot enable.
I had something similar the other day with a fresh install of Ubu 24.04 from Ventoy stick - the Ubu installer didn’t seem to setup grub or something - it was booting just fine before on 24.10…
I went into the BIOS - had to enable secure boot, enable EFI and legacy boot, disable secure boot, then set it to default to legacy boot and it now boots fine…
Thanks all for your support … I tried a few of these suggestions but they did not make a difference … still have not found the solution to my GRUBby problem.
As I noted in first post, when I use the Super Grub2 disk on USB it boots the Linux Mint and runs no problem. Somehow it seems the boot sector and or Grub not installed on the HDD. Obviously I don’t understand how all this works. I’ve installed Mint and dozens of other distros previously and no problems with booting and grub.
Not sure if my bios is Legacy or UEFI … I don’t see the word uefi anywher in my bios so probably legacy ??
Boot Repair on the usb returned an error message so no changes were made.
I’ve not used Mint so don’t know what the installer does for boot. It would help if someone with Mint checks their lsblk and fstab too.
Please boot Mint with the USB stick and in terminal write:
lsblk
Then
cat /etc/fstab
And last one
ls /boot/grub
And show us the output. Then we know what’s going on with the install… the rest of my reply is just guessing how to proceed. You can ignore it at this moment and wait for someone’s reply when you give us the info of lsblk and fstab.
You should have a boot or EFI partition and / partition (=root) mounted. If lsblk only shows / mount point but not boot or efi then you need to mount that partition. It’s usually the first (appt. 512M) partition. So probably you should try this:
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /boot
Or
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /efi
If you get error that there’s no mount point X you can made one (sudo mkdir /efi). The fstab also needs to be modified so better ignore this part at the moment
OK, let us assume legacy boot.
The method of installing grub given by @pdecker is the correct one for legacy boot
but
it will only work if the disk partition table is msdos type and grub can be written to the MBR area of the disk
If your disk has a ‘gpt’ partition table , it needs to contain a 1Mb unformatted partition called bios-grub, which is where grub will be written
So
Did you try @pdecker 's grub install instructions? What message did you get?
and
Can you check what your partition table type is .?
I have mint, here is my fstab. I remove the ‘#’ to remove enlarge and bold print.
/ was on /dev/nvme0n1p2 during installation
UUID=80774497-f207-4cc6-b20f-08765841e894 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
/boot/efi was on /dev/nvme1n1p1 during installation
UUID=5673-CF1B /boot/efi vfat umask=0077 0 1
/home was on /dev/nvme0n1p6 during installation
UUID=7abdf608-7383-4b3f-bf10-7c8c5e3d7446 /home ext4 defaults 0 2
swap was on /dev/nvme0n1p5 during installation
UUID=393f8b5a-3d92-4079-b7d7-085f025c2722 none swap sw 0 0
And my lsblk. I have tri-boot laptop. Win11, Mint, and MX. I hope this helps.
lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
nvme1n1 259:0 0 931.5G 0 disk
├─nvme1n1p1 259:1 0 16M 0 part
├─nvme1n1p2 259:2 0 25.1G 0 part /
├─nvme1n1p3 259:3 0 32.1G 0 part
├─nvme1n1p4 259:4 0 18.5G 0 part
├─nvme1n1p5 259:5 0 1.9G 0 part [SWAP]
├─nvme1n1p6 259:6 0 47.7G 0 part /home
├─nvme1n1p7 259:7 0 66.8G 0 part
├─nvme1n1p8 259:8 0 494.2G 0 part
├─nvme1n1p9 259:9 0 1G 0 part
└─nvme1n1p10 259:10 0 23.5G 0 part
nvme0n1 259:11 0 238.5G 0 disk
├─nvme0n1p1 259:12 0 100M 0 part /boot/efi
├─nvme0n1p2 259:13 0 16M 0 part
├─nvme0n1p3 259:14 0 66.1G 0 part
├─nvme0n1p4 259:15 0 837M 0 part
├─nvme0n1p5 259:16 0 113.4G 0 part
├─nvme0n1p6 259:17 0 25G 0 part
└─nvme0n1p7 259:18 0 604M 0 part
“Operation system not found” looks like a good match, if you care to read thru it. The posting is not that old. August 2022. The guy was installing Mint, installed it a second time and got the same message.
Yo[quote=“Howard , post:12, topic:12962, full:true, username:easyt50”]
“Operation system not found” looks like a good match, if you care to read thru it. The posting is not that old. August 2022. The guy was installing Mint, installed it a second time and got the same message.
" If booting/installing on BIOS mode, look at this thread showing there is a Mint installer bug when choosing that option Erase disk and install Linux Mint . To workaround the bug on installing you will need to format disk with MBR/msdos scheme and create partition(s) with Disks or Gparted before installing with Something else option. Then ignore warning about EFI partition is needed and press on Continue button. "
In any install of grub one has to be careful about the choice of
partition table type ( msdos or GPT)
boot method ( legacy or Uefi)
The two most used combinations are
msdos partitioning with legacy boot… here grub is written to the MBR
gpt partitioning with Uefi boot … here grub is written to an EFI partition
it is also possible to have
got partitioning with legacy boot … here grub is written to a bios-grub partition.
That is why Howard’s link suggests using gparted to do the partitioning BEFORE you use the installer… you have to get the partitioning right for your boot type.
It would seem from reading Howard’s link that Mint installer in " Erase and use whole disk" mode can not partition the disk on a legacy boot machine properly.
The link gives the solution … use manual (custom) partitioning.
Exactly.
There is a limit to how much we can help, if people do not provide precise information on their setup.
One does not get far playing guessing games with grub.
Yes, feedback on a person question / problem is critical in helping to solve their problem.
Plus it is nice to know if the suggestion worked or not, nice to know if the problem was inded solved, or even a “Thank you” for your help, or some communication back even if it, “I can not work on the problem right now. I will get back to you.”
Apologies for any delay … I have been busy with a number other (non-Linux)things in my life … hope to find the time to go through some more of the suggestions over this weekend…
I did try boot repair to no avail, also clicked the boot info button in that app … but it sent me link to a pastebin, where I do not have an account, so I could not even LOOK at the info.
and I have looked through my bios and found no reference to EFI anywhere so I am thinking mine is legacy boot. Also this:
The computer is Dell XPS L502x cpu Core i7 2670qm built in 2012; mobo has this line: “UEFI - [legacy]: Dell V A12”
I will try some of the other suggestions and requests and try to post some of the outputs, as suggested.
thanks very much to all for following this. And for your many suggestions. Stan
Disk partition was as Mint set it up on a fresh install on the full disk:
Sda1 is 1mb bios boot
Sda2 is 538mb mount at /boot/grub … Fat32. Says EFI system as partition type.
Sda3 is 750gb not mounted (I’m logged in on live usb) Ext4. Linux file system partition type.
I don’t see “secure boot” anywhere.
I saw something in Google search on the COW error. Advises to just reinstall linux … but I have done that 4 or 5 times.
“UEFI - [legacy]”
That seems to indicate it has both uefi boot and legacy boot.
Can you look in your bios again … under boot settings or boot config … there should be an option where you can choose uefi or legacy boot.
You need to find it and see what it is set to.