Arch Linux

Fr3d

Member

Registered: 2025-12-14

Posts: 18

SOLVED GRUB directory is empty, and booting goes straight to bios menu

I was installing Arch, and upon rebooting, the error happened. It goes into a grub menu, but only showing the UEFI settings, which I can't even enter. Then it goes to the bios menu.
Upon research I've heard that it is a commmon issue on msi motherboards, but the common workaround with the --removable tag in the grub-install command didn't work. The PC is in UEFI mode aswell, I mounted everything well and the config file for grub has also been created.
What I found out though, is that the GRUB directory in /boot/EFI is empty.
Thank you for the help in advance!

Last edited by Fr3d (2025-12-15 23:06:51)

system72

Member

Registered: 2025-11-22

Posts: 572

Website

Re: SOLVED GRUB directory is empty, and booting goes straight to bios menu

reinstall grub without the --removable flag since you were able to boot into grub before, then since there was only a "go back to firmware" option inside of grub its either a: you didnt regenerate the config, or b: you have no kernel images / initramfs images in /boot, so after reinstalling grub reinstall the kernel as well with:

pacman -S linux

or another kernel if you're not using the vanilla arch kernel

then regenerate the config file:

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

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Everything2067

Member

Registered: 2025-06-29

Posts: 105

Re: SOLVED GRUB directory is empty, and booting goes straight to bios menu

/etc/default/grub

...
#GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false
...

Uncomment this line so that os-prober will be able to detect your installation. Then run grub-mkconfig once again.

If you have no reason to use GRUB then try using systemd-boot. The config files in systemd-boot are so simple it is hard to mess it up.

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Fr3d

Member

Registered: 2025-12-14

Posts: 18

Re: SOLVED GRUB directory is empty, and booting goes straight to bios menu

reinstall grub without the --removable flag since you were able to boot into grub before, then since there was only a "go back to firmware" option inside of grub its either a: you didnt regenerate the config, or b: you have no kernel images / initramfs images in /boot, so after reinstalling grub reinstall the kernel as well with:

pacman -S linux

or another kernel if you're not using the vanilla arch kernel

then regenerate the config file:

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

That worked! Thank you! Weird, I didn't see that I need to do that neither in the wiki, nor in the yt guide I was watching...

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 75,082

Re: SOLVED GRUB directory is empty, and booting goes straight to bios menu

nor in the yt guide I was watching...

which is where your problems started…
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide

Please always remember to mark resolved threads by editing your initial posts subject - so others will know that there's no task left, but maybe a solution to find.
Thanks.

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