Arch Linux

cygpax

Member

Registered: 2021-09-04

Posts: 5

[SOLVED] Can't boot into Arch after reinstalling W10 on separate drive

For context, I always had Windows and Arch on separate drives. Windows and all its partitions on a SATA SSD; Arch on an NVME SSD with 3 partitions: the BIOS/GPT boot partition (vfat), the Arch boot partition (ext4), and the Arch root partition (encrypted LUKS with ext4).

So last night I reinstalled Windows 10 to the SATA SSD. To make sure I didn't accidentally mess with the other drives, I disconnected them all except this SSD, then I did a clean Windows installation, wiping everything from the SSD. Once I finished, I powered off the system, then reconnected the drives.

When I powered the system back on and booted from the NVME SSD and got a message that said to insert a bootable drive. I tried to recover from this by booting into a live USB of Arch and did the following in order:

• Unlocked the LUKS partition with `cryptsetup open /dev/nvme0n1p3 luks_root`

• Mounted the encrypted partition with `mount /dev/mapper/luks_root /mnt`

• Mounted the Arch boot partition with `mount /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt/boot`

• Did nothing with the BIOS/GPT boot partition, as I didn't do that during the installation

• arch-chroot'd into my system

• Reinstalled grub with pacman

• Ran `grub-install --target=i386-pc /dev/nvme0n1`

• Ran `grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg`

• Exited the chroot and rebooted

I was able to get into the system once, but it's either inconsistent or I did something that I don't remember doing. Not that it'd matter because the next time I tried to boot into it, I got the same error.

Does anyone know how to fix this issue?

Last edited by cygpax (2021-09-14 19:22:00)

Klusio19

Member

Registered: 2021-09-13

Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot into Arch after reinstalling W10 on separate drive

Try to arch-chroot and install os-prober. Run it. Then go to /etc/default/grub move to the end of the file and add line:
GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false
(Add that line without the # mark). Then save the file. Run again grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
And run again os-prober. Run update-grub maby too.
I had similar problem some time ago and it worked.

cygpax

Member

Registered: 2021-09-04

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot into Arch after reinstalling W10 on separate drive

Try to arch-chroot and install os-prober. Run it. Then go to /etc/default/grub move to the end of the file and add line:
GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false
(Add that line without the # mark). Then save the file. Run again grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
And run again os-prober. Run update-grub maby too.
I had similar problem some time ago and it worked.

I already have os-prober and have that line set as false. It's been like that since I first installed Arch.

Mr Victory

Member

Registered: 2021-06-10

Posts: 41

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot into Arch after reinstalling W10 on separate drive

Hello, it looks like there is a low level problem with either BIOS or the UEFI.
Please send the output of blkid when all drives are connected and parted /dev/<disk> for both Windows and Arch Linux drive. (replace /dev/<disk> with path to your disks)

Run update-grub maby too.

update-grub is Ubuntu-specific, at least it does not exist on Arch Linux. I have only seen it on Linux Mint

pacman -F /usr/bin/update-grub
<no output>

cygpax

Member

Registered: 2021-09-04

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot into Arch after reinstalling W10 on separate drive

Hello, it looks like there is a low level problem with either BIOS or the UEFI.
Please send the output of blkid when all drives are connected and parted /dev/<disk> for both Windows and Arch Linux drive. (replace /dev/<disk> with path to your disks)

Run update-grub maby too.

update-grub is Ubuntu-specific, at least it does not exist on Arch Linux. I have only seen it on Linux Mint

pacman -F /usr/bin/update-grub
<no output>

You were right; it was a problem with the Legacy BIOS and UEFI. I wasn't able to boot with UEFI when I first installed Arch even though I'd enabled that option in my motherboard (Gigabyte B450M D3SH) BIOS. I guess the W10 reinstallation somehow fixed that problem, so now I boot into Arch with UEFI.

Last edited by cygpax (2021-09-14 19:14:59)