Arch Linux

iceflower

Member

Registered: 2015-01-04

Posts: 3

Grub - Navigation with arrow keys broken (in BIOS mode)?

Hi folks,
when facing the Grub menu in BIOS mode, I cannot navigate properly with the arrow keys. When I press arrow down, the selection jumps to the end of the list, when I press arrow up, it jumps back to the first entry on the list. It is reproducible with the Grub menu of the installation media and with Grub installed to disk. In UEFI mode, navigating with the arrow keys works fine.

I tried three different USB keyboards, updated the BIOS of my ASRock mainboard - the problem persists. I don't know if it's a bug in Grub or in my BIOS/UEFI.

Does anyone else have this problem in BIOS mode?

ua4000

Member

Registered: 2015-10-14

Posts: 507

Re: Grub - Navigation with arrow keys broken (in BIOS mode)?

Do you have the issue also, when navigating inside the BIOS menu, e.g. cpu settings or boot-order items ?
Do have have any USB related settings in BIOS ?
Can you try another USB port on the machine ? An USB 2.0 only port would be good.
ASRock - this sounds like a self build desktop machine ? Have you more details on mainboard / cpu / hardware configuration ? Overclocked ?

Since BIOS boot is the legacy way, you could consider yourself lucky to have it working fine in UEFI mode.
Do you have any objections to use and install your system only in UEFI mode ?

iceflower

Member

Registered: 2015-01-04

Posts: 3

Re: Grub - Navigation with arrow keys broken (in BIOS mode)?

Hi ua4000,

thanks for your reply.

Do you have the issue also, when navigating inside the BIOS menu, e.g. cpu settings or boot-order items ?

No, this works fine all the time.

Do you have any USB related settings in BIOS ?

Unfortunately, no.

Can you try another USB port on the machine ? An USB 2.0 only port would be good.

I tried it. I even used another keyboard but the problem remains the same. But I remember, that after installation, on first reboot, I did not have the issue.

ASRock - this sounds like a self build desktop machine ? Have you more details on mainboard / cpu / hardware configuration ? Overclocked ?

Yes, it's a self build desktop. It's not overclocked. Here a brief overview of the setup:

• Mainboard: ASRock B450M Pro4 (P10.31)

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700G

• Graphics: Radeon RX 580 (in use)

• RAM: 16 GB, 2133 MHz

• Drives:

  • 450 GB SSD (Kingston), EXT4 formatted and Mageia 9 + Grub installed, MBR/DOS partition table

  • 450 GB SSD (Crucial) with Windows 10 installed, MBR/DOS partition table

  • 240 GB M.2 SSD (Verbatim), EXT4 formatted and Arch Linux + Grub installed, MBR/DOS partition table

  • 2 TB HDD (Seagate), NTFS formatted, GPT partition table

Do you have any objections to use and install your system only in UEFI mode ?

Yes, unfortunately Windows was installed in BIOS mode and I fear reinstallation. But my workaround for now is: I have installed two Grub bootloaders on different drives and set the default boot entry to another operating system manually. So dual-boot is working when I select the proper drive first

Something different: I just remember that I used the Mageia installer in advanced mode for partitioning once and it has a non-default setting for the start sector of a partition as far as I remember (less than 2048 blocks). Maybe that breaks my whole setup as I read on the wiki article on Grub this could cause some trouble. Maybe I'm going to disconnect all drives and the try/analyze them one by one. I have at least one drive which sticks to the 2048 blocks spacing...

Last edited by iceflower (2025-04-22 21:58:56)

goro9922

Member

Registered: 2019-04-12

Posts: 39

Re: Grub - Navigation with arrow keys broken (in BIOS mode)?

I see that there's a BIOS update for this motherboard. As a last resort, you could try to upgrade it.

I have an ASRock B550, and at one point I was considering to upgrade the CPU to a 5700G, but it required a BIOS update I think. I ended up sticking with my old CPU, a 3700X.

ua4000

Member

Registered: 2015-10-14

Posts: 507

Re: Grub - Navigation with arrow keys broken (in BIOS mode)?

yes, a BIOS update could help.
I have right now only these in mind:

Did you already read this, especially the "Disable Fast Startup" tips ?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dual_boot_with_Windows

Some mainboards also have a "fast boot" (or similar) option in BIOS - try to disable this, because it skips some device initialization.

And as last: I'm no Windows expert, but as far as I know, only Win11 remains supported after October, and for Win11 you must go to UEFI mode boot.