SOLVED Windows 10 Dual Boot but MX Linux doesn't show up

[Gordon Cooper]

Have never tried the following routine with Win10 but it certainly worked with earlier Win versions.

First defragged the disk, then used Gparted to shrink Win. With GParted still booted created the usual 3 LInux Partitions.

Installed MX telling it to put Grub in the MBR.

Shutdown the system, and rebooted from a Puppy Linux disk then used Puppy's Grub4DOS utility to remake Grub.

Defrag is probably not needed with a new computer but I would run it anyway.

[ronjnk]

I'm not sure what exactly a GRUB boot menu is since this is my first attempt at a dual boot computer. I am expecting when I power the computer up to see some screen that appears that will allow me to choose between windows and Linux. I do not have that nor have I ever seen that here.

When I powered up, it always went direct to windows. Then after the new MX reinstall a few hours ago, it went to the Lenovo screen and spun doing nothing. The only way I have ever been able to see a selection of the 2 systems is when I use F12 at start up. Then I could see both windows and linux in a menu format.

I did do the update grub which showed this:

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root@bushguy:/home/bushguy# update-grub
Generating grub configuration file ...
using custom appearance settings
Found background image: /usr/share/backgrounds/MXLinux/grub/linen-gradientblu-grub.png
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.19.0-1-amd64
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.19.0-1-amd64
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin
Found mtest-64.efi image: /boot/uefi-mt/mtest-64.efi
Found Windows Boot Manager on /dev/sda1@/efi/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
Adding boot menu entry for EFI firmware configuration
done

Then I rebooted and now it automatically goes to a a utility program that tries to do an automatic repair. I see a quick message saying "bad system config info" It tries to do an automatic repair and fails with a message "your PC did not start correctly" If I go to advanced options at that point, it takes me to microsoft recovery. If I try to reinstall windows from the recovery partition by telling it to reset, I get a message "there was a problem resetting your PC" So I can't even utilize the reinstall windows 10 recovery partition.

I anticipated a disaster like this and I have a Lenovo bootable USB in the mail coming next week. I can also download a bootable file off their website. However, I'm reluctant to monkey with a new complete install of windows if there's a simple solution. I pass on the information and perhaps there are still a few tricks to try. If not, I will try to get a windows 10 USB and reinstall and essentially start from scratch.

Thank you to everyone!

PS to Gordon... Thanks you for your input. This is a SSD drive and my understanding is defrag doesn't do much, and as you mentioned, it's brand new and unused other than operating system stuff.

[Gordon Cooper]

Thanks ronjnk, have never tried to defrag an SSD, it might be interesting to look at a well used Windows SSD and see if the files are scattered through much of it, like the old hard drives.

One other system used here, this middle aged Dell Optiplex came with Win7. I followed the procedure previously described to put MX-17 in dual boot with Win7, then added a 120 GB SSD to be drive A (sda in LInux terms) and that is where I have installed MX-18.
The original HD was plugged into the second SATA socket on the motherboard so to be drive B.

[Stevo]

You don't have to defrag SSD drives, since there is no waiting for a drive to rotate to bring some fragment near the head. Data is pretty much accessed instantly.

[fehlix]

I anticipated a disaster like this and I have a Lenovo bootable USB in the mail coming next week. I can also download a bootable file off their website. However, I'm reluctant to monkey with a new complete install of windows if there's a simple solution. I pass on the information and perhaps there are still a few tricks to try. If not, I will try to get a windows 10 USB and reinstall and essentially start from scratch.

I wonder if you could disable RAID within the BIOS/UEFI-SATA controler for before you re-install the Windows 10 and that drive,
as I have seen a couple of reports mentioning GTP-partition table issues on RAID volumes. And as it appears the UEFI table is very sensible as soon as partition table inconsistancy get detected it resets the EFI-table entries, and as in your case forwards to boot into diagnostic mode.

[ronjnk]

Good Morning to all. I have downloaded a windows recovery file and created a recovery USB.

I went into BIOS to look at this RAID. Under "Devices" Tab, I come to Intel Rapid Storage Technology. In that setting is NON-RAID Physical disks. Then I have 3 choices:
SATA 0.0 Samsung 238 Gig drive
SATA 0.1 ST500 465 Gig drive
PCIe 1.0 Intel 13.4 Gig

Then if I click on SATA 0.0 it has a bunch of information including status:Non-Raid, Controller type AHCI
Click on SATA 0.1 Status Non-Raid, Controller Type AHCI
Click on PCIe Status Offline, Controller type NUMe

This computer came with Intel Optane 16Gig Memory which I believe would be the PCIe slot. As far as the BIOS settings are concerned, it looks to me as if RAID is not enabled on any drives.

I'll wait a few hours to see if there are any comments and then wish me luck. I'm going in to the bowels of the beast to reinstall windows and start from scratch. Ron

[Paul..]

What model of Lenovo desktop is this? (Looking to see if I can find UEFI setup screens...and look at Key Management)

[ronjnk]

One further comment. I continued to wander around BIOS and came across "Configure SATA as". After that it says [Intel(R) RST with Intel (R) Optane]

When I click on Configure SATA as, I have 2 choices AHCI or [Intel(R) RST with Intel (R) Optane] The Intel option is currently selected.

In the help message associated with this selection it says "Select AHCI/RAID/ [Intel(R) RST with Intel (R) Optane] Device driver support is required for AHCI or Raid or [Intel(R) RST with Intel (R) Optane]. Depending on how the hard disk was installed, changing this setting may prevent the system from booting."

I don't know what it all means and whether I leave things alone and reinstall. I'm inclined to leave the system the way it is and give it a reinstall but I'll wait to see if there is any comment. Thank you. Ron

[ronjnk]

Hi Paul. This is a Thinkcentre M720 tower

[fehlix]

Good Morning to all. I have downloaded a windows recovery file and created a recovery USB.

I went into BIOS to look at this RAID. Under "Devices" Tab, I come to Intel Rapid Storage Technology. In that setting is NON-RAID Physical disks. Then I have 3 choices:
SATA 0.0 Samsung 238 Gig drive
SATA 0.1 ST500 465 Gig drive
PCIe 1.0 Intel 13.4 Gig

Then if I click on SATA 0.0 it has a bunch of information including status:Non-Raid, Controller type AHCI
Click on SATA 0.1 Status Non-Raid, Controller Type AHCI
Click on PCIe Status Offline, Controller type NUMe

This computer came with Intel Optane 16Gig Memory which I believe would be the PCIe slot. As far as the BIOS settings are concerned, it looks to me as if RAID is not enabled on any drives.

I'll wait a few hours to see if there are any comments and then wish me luck. I'm going in to the bowels of the beast to reinstall windows and start from scratch. Ron

For your desktop "LENOVO product: 10SQCTO1WW v: ThinkCentre M720t"
we have seen on /dev/sda which is the samsung SSD
in the output of "lsblk -f", that this drive reports to have "Volumes" as part of raid-membership:
root@mx1:/home/demo# sudo lsblk -f

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NAME   FSTYPE          LABEL     UUID                                 MOUNTPOINT
sda    isw_raid_member                                                
├─sda1 vfat            SYSTEM    66A3-D4DE                            
├─sda2 isw_raid_member                                                
├─sda3 ntfs            Windows   16C0A67FC0A664A9                     
├─sda4 ntfs            WinRE_DRV 6E86A6D886A6A057                     
├─sda5 ext4            rootMX18  ed46701e-61d5-4583-855b-11ee327e535b 
├─sda6 ext4            homeMX    3383b7d6-15c7-4625-83fb-67fc66223ec1 
└─sda7 swap            swapMX    7ad053ec-4b59-47ac-83a7-91901cf8ea49 [SWAP]

To avoid further GPT/RAID issues, you would check or change the SATA-controler setting to NON-RAID of the SSD device.
If it is already set to NON-RAID, I assume the SSD is "wrongly" formated , as it is currently formated to be ready/prepared for being a RAID-member. Or at least I have to admit, I don't understand to have a single SSD-disk in the system as RAID-member. After having changed the RAID-membership to NON-RAID with the SATA-controler the disk is ready to get formated freshly.