[SOLVED] UEFI loader freezes after key press

martx · 2015-09-13 18:32:00

Hi everyone, just installed Arch alongside Windows 8 and I'm having a problem when booting.

Background:

Got a new laptop with Windows 8 and decided to dual boot it with Arch. As per instructions on the wiki, I created it using UEFI/GPT. I ran into a few problems, so, being the newbie I am, I ended up reformatting the Linux partitions and reinstalling a few times, but have a working Arch system now. In UEFI settings I set the Linux Boot Manager as the first boot option so I have the option to boot into either OS.

Problem Overview:

When turning the computer on I get the expected bootloader menu, with Arch Linux selected and a timeout of 7 seconds, as desired.
Some of the time, this works as normal - I can select the system I want, press enter, and it boots without a problem. Other times, however, if I press the down arrow, Windows Boot Manager becomes highlighted and immediately the whole thing freezes - I'm unable to change my selection, and pressing enter doesn't do anything. The only thing I can do from here is a hard shutdown (which is sometimes, but not all of the time, accompanied by a single beep, which, if it's the UEFI motherboard, would indicate "System boot successfull"; not sure what to make of that).
If the bootloader freezes this way, it will keep doing it for the next several boot-ups. If I select the default option, or wait for the timeout, Arch loads without a problem, but I'm unable to change my selection lest the bootloader freeze again. After severl reboots, the bootloader starts working normally again, and I'm able to boot into Windows or the UEFI firmware settings.
I haven't noticed any patterns or consistency at any point during this process. The first time, everything was working fine again after just a few reboots, another time it took several dozen reboots.

Specs and Settings:

(let me know if you want to see anything else here)

Hardware:
Computer model: MSI GE72 2QC Apache
CPU: Intel i7 with integrated graphics
GPU: Nvidia GTX 960M (I'm not using this in Arch, I've blacklisted nouveau as it was giving me problems earlier; I'll just stick with the Intel integrated graphics for now)
UEFI settings:
Safe Boot: Disabled
Fast Boot: Enabled (could this be the problem?)
Boot Mode: UEFI (without CSM)
Partitions:
fstab:

# /dev/sda6
UUID=6ddd37cd-491b-4df1-b097-5b93d3f71bde    /             ext4          rw,relatime,data=ordered    0 1

# /dev/sda2 LABEL=SYSTEM
UUID=F48C-9E21          /boot         vfat          rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro    0 2

# /dev/sda7
UUID=797ec492-547d-43ff-961e-fb277d3ffa33    /home         ext4          rw,relatime,data=ordered    0 2

# /dev/sda5
UUID=7C033EEE1D003D35    /Shared       ntfs-3g          rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0,allow_other,blksize=4096    0 0

$ lsblk:

NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 931.5G  0 disk 
|-sda1   8:1    0   600M  0 part 
|-sda2   8:2    0   300M  0 part /boot
|-sda3   8:3    0   128M  0 part 
|-sda4   8:4    0   500G  0 part 
|-sda5   8:5    0   250G  0 part /Shared
|-sda6   8:6    0    20G  0 part /
|-sda7   8:7    0 141.8G  0 part /home
`-sda8   8:8    0  18.7G  0 part 
sr0     11:0    1  1024M  0 rom

sda1, sda3, and sda8: came with Windows, not sure what they're for, haven't touched them.
sda2: vfat EFI System Partition, mounted to /boot by Arch.
sda4: NTFS Windows C: drive, contains the Windows installation.
sda5: NTFS shared drive for music, documents, etc. Windows sees it as D:, Arch mounts it to /Shared using ntfs-3g.
sda6: ext4 root partition for Arch.
sda7: ext4 /home partition for Arch.

Last edited by martx (2015-09-14 01:01:47)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2015-09-13 19:52:38

martx wrote:

Fast Boot: Enabled (could this be the problem?)

Perhaps -- "Fast Boot" leaves the Windows partitons (including the ESP) mounted and this may cause problems.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/63 … s-8-a.html

If this doesn't fix it, you could make a custom NVRAM entry for your Arch system and use the UEFI (firmware) boot manager to select between Windows & Arch.

martx · 2015-09-13 20:38:38

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

Perhaps -- "Fast Boot" leaves the Windows partitons (including the ESP) mounted and this may cause problems.

Thanks for the response! Did this, and it seems to be working fine so far. I'll go through a few more reboot cycles and some general use on both systems, and report back in a few hours, hopefully tagging the thread as solved.

EDIT:
Everything still working fine. Marking thread as solved.

Last edited by martx (2015-09-14 01:01:32)

Arch Linux

#1 2015-09-13 18:32:00