You are not logged in.

#1 2017-04-09 22:43:06

dxh
Member
Registered: 2017-04-09
Posts: 2

[Solved] UEFI-based install boots on one machine but not another

I have just completed a fresh install of Arch on a SSD, intended to be the OS for my new mahcine.  The disk boots successfully on my old machine, but fails to boot on my new machine, giving the error message:

Reboot and select proper Boot device
or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key

I found this forum post on the same error message https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=196733.  However, the apparent problem there is using GRUB as a bootloader.  I would be surprised if that's the case here, since an old (but up-to-date) Arch disk I have runs well on both machines, and it uses GRUB (it has /boot/grub, for example).

I've gone over the forum and the installation instructions in some detail, and I'm at a loss about what to try next. I'm looking for suggestions about where the problem could be.

----
Here are some specs:

My old machine is 64-bit AMD. My new machine is 64-bit Intel. They are desktop computers.
My old disk is 250GB SSD, with a 512MiB boot partition, and an encrypted root partition.
My new disk is 500GB SSD, with a 2GiB boot partition, and an encrypted root partition.

Both are using the new GRUB as a bootloader, and both are set up to use UEFI.

Let me know what other info would be useful.

Last edited by dxh (2017-04-10 06:52:19)

Offline

#2 2017-04-10 04:23:20

tom.ty89
Member
Registered: 2012-11-15
Posts: 897

Re: [Solved] UEFI-based install boots on one machine but not another

UEFI-based booting usually requires the EFI executable (e.g. the bootloader) to be "registered" as a UEFI boot entry in its non-volatile memory, unless the executable is in the fallback path (\EFI\Boot\BOOTX64.EFI under the ESP for 64-bit UEFI), while grub-install will only install its EFI executable to that path if you specified the switch --removable. So either you run grub-install again (with --removable if not done in the new machine), or copy the installed executable to the fallback path, or registered it on the new machine with efibootmgr manually.

P.S. The error message you quoted is from the CSM of your UEFI, since there is no available UEFI boot entry, so it fall back to legacy boot. Since no legacy boot code is on the (P)MBR of your disk for it to run, it throws you that error.

Last edited by tom.ty89 (2017-04-10 04:28:27)

Offline

#3 2017-04-10 06:58:48

dxh
Member
Registered: 2017-04-09
Posts: 2

Re: [Solved] UEFI-based install boots on one machine but not another

Thanks --- that makes sense, and was the complete source of my problem. The disk now boots properly on both machines.

I'm not sure I understand how my old machine was originally able to boot from the disk given that I had misconfigured the UEFI in that way.  Shouldn't it also have been unable to locate the executable in the fallback path? What was different about the mainboard of my old machine?

Offline

#4 2017-04-10 07:05:51

tom.ty89
Member
Registered: 2012-11-15
Posts: 897

Re: [Solved] UEFI-based install boots on one machine but not another

grub-install without --removable will install the EFI executable to somewhere like \EFI\grub\grubx64.efi AND register it as a UEFI boot entry, so you will be able to boot it on the UEFI machine you ran grub-install, but not on other machines that you moved the drive to.

http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/grub.g … 5c9c#n1841
where update_nvram is true unless the --no-nvram switch is used.

Last edited by tom.ty89 (2017-04-10 07:21:08)

Offline

Board footer

Powered by FluxBB