Arch Linux

misza

Member

Registered: 2023-10-18

Posts: 3

[SOLVED] Unable to boot Samsung NP300 laptop after fresh installation

After following the installation guide I'm not able to boot from the HDD.

PREAMBLE:
The laptop is Samsung NP300E5X-S05ru. Previously had windows, after that debian, if memory serves me correctly. About a year ago I tried installing Arch but if I recall correctly I skipped some steps by the end of the installation guide, which may or may not be the cause of what happened. Anyways, a year ago I bricked it: specifically, I couldn't boot anything. Neither could I access BIOS, only a simple menu with two tabs ('Boot Menu', 'App Menu'), both of which were empty. Recently, I decided to repair the situation, discovering that I'm able to boot from USB, if I press F9. This allowed me to reflash BIOS using Windows Preinstallation Environment.

INSTALLATION PROCESS:
1) prepare USB stick with cat
2) in the live environment no 'efi' directory in /sys/firmware/
3) successfully connected to the WiFi
4) timedatectl output is OK
5) I have a single HDD, for which used fdisk to partition. I created a dos partition table, then created a 4Gb Linux swap/Solaris partition as sda1 from 2048 sector, and /dev/sda2 Linux partition with 461Gb right after the swap partition. There is some space left after that partition, around a Megabyte.
6) formatted the partition and initialized swap
7) mounted the partition and enabled swap
8) pacstrap run without issues (install intel-ucode, grub and efibootmgr too)
9) run genfstab
10) arch-chroot to do timezone configuration, localization and create hostname. Set the root password.
11) grub-install --target=i386-pc /dev/sda
12) grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
13) exit chroot and umount /mnt

RESULT:
Turning the laptop on results in samsung loading screen, after which black screen, like some kind of failure to boot from HDD. Next is the same samsung loading screen (looks like another boot attempt) after which I'm greeted with the menu I mentioned above (with tabs 'Boot menu' and 'App menu'). In the Boot menu I see '1. CD 2. HDD name'. In the app menu I see 1. Setup, choosing which leads to the BIOS menu. In the BIOS menu I can check that Fast BIOS Mode is disabled. In the 'Security' tab, I can see 'HDD Password: Frozen' and 'Password on Boot: Enabled' but I'm not sure this is the problem.

This laptop model has issues with bricking when installing in UEFI mode, hence I did everything in BIOS legacy modes. Also, I can check in BIOS that 'UEFI Boot Support' is disabled. Can you point me in directions towards solving this boot problem? If I boot live environment I'm able to access the installed system through arch-chroot which remains on the HDD unchanged. Is the problem with some missing drivers, or did I mess up with Grub?

Last edited by misza (2023-10-28 15:09:52)

pgoetz

Member

From: Austin, Texas

Registered: 2014-02-21

Posts: 355

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to boot Samsung NP300 laptop after fresh installation

Did you check to make sure Secure Boot is turned off?

misza

Member

Registered: 2023-10-18

Posts: 3

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to boot Samsung NP300 laptop after fresh installation

Secure Boot option is absent from the BIOS I reflashed. Running some utility in Windows PE I discovered the BIOS version was P05RAJ and I had no luck finding it from the official sources. But I found it with unlocked Advanced options on forum with bios mods. When weekend comes I might try and install Debian or even Windows to see whether it's a BIOS only problem then (initally I wasn't sure I've gone through the correct steps regarding partinioning and grub. It's my second Arch installation, first being successful on a more modern Acer laptop with UEFI and GPT).

misza

Member

Registered: 2023-10-18

Posts: 3

Re: [SOLVED] Unable to boot Samsung NP300 laptop after fresh installation

No idea what went wrong with my manual installation. I tried installing Windows and it went alright, so that was not a hardware problem. Next, I tried installing Arch again, but this time I just used archinstall script and it installed perfectly.