[SOLVED] Updated Bios via Windoze, get grub rescue, no boot UEFI laptop

[Moderator BobC]

Some times you just can’t win. I can’t boot it at all. Its a Dell XPS 15 7559 laptop. It doesn’t get the normal Dell pre-boot screen with the F12 boot options option or blue boot screen where I switch it to Legacy mode and select Windoze or Linux.

Any ideas how to recover? I really, really hate UEFI.

• This topic was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by BobC.

[Anonymous]

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websearch
factory reset bios Dell XPS 15 7559

My closest dealings with anything like that would have been desktop + legacy BIOS.
If no display, and no POST code beeps… I was led to remove the CMOS coin battery and/or jumper a pair of mobo pins in order to attempt a “factory reset of the BIOS”. As I recall, that solved the problem in all occasions, minus one. (In that case, the no-op ws due to mobo hardware failure.)

[Moderator BobC]

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I don’t think its a BIOS issue, necessarily, it does boot to the grub, but then says it can’t find the file to boot from.

I was hoping I could boot to a USB of some distro, and get it to rebuild the grub stuff so that I could boot any of the partitions there, or get me into one of them so I could reinstall grub, and then be able to boot. I’m not sure if antiX is the best choice, but I was booting from MX previously, I think, and it was booting ok.

[Forum Admin BitJam]

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BobC wrote:

I don’t think its a BIOS issue, necessarily, it does boot to the grub, but then says it can’t find the file to boot from.

I was hoping I could boot to a USB of some distro, and get it to rebuild the grub stuff so that I could boot any of the partitions there, or get me into one of them so I could reinstall grub, and then be able to boot. I’m not sure if antiX is the best choice, but I was booting from MX previously, I think, and it was booting ok.

If you can’t get to BIOS or the F12 boot menu then that is something Dell should help you with. Getting this fixed may help with the other problems. IMO fixing this is plan-A.

Are there any error messages when you get to the grub prompt? Did something happen to the machine to make it this way? Did it arrive this way? Did it spontaneously stop working? You may be able to boot a live-usb if you have enough features at the grub command line. Have a live-usb plugged in when you boot. See if it shows up when you do an “ls” command. It might show up as (hd1), for example. Then try “ls (hd1,1)/” If you see an “antiX” directory then you can try booting with

linux (hd1,1)/antiX/vmlinuz quiet
initrd (hd1,1)/antiX/initrd.gz
boot

I’m not a grub expert. There may be better ways (or other ways that actually work) but IMO if you can’t get to BIOS or the F12 boot menu then something is seriously wrong and all bets may be off.

• This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by BitJam.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by BitJam.
• This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by BitJam.

Context is worth 80 IQ points -- Alan Kay

[Moderator BobC]

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ok, the letters are super super tiny, so I took a pic and enlarged it. I’m guessing its efi but could be cfi or sfi.

error: file `/boot/grub/x86_64-efi/normal.mod’ not found.
Entering rescue mode…
grub rescue> _

It wasn’t ever perfect under Linux. It had no problems other than windoze being pathetically slow and super obnoxious. I added an SSD and got windoze onto it, I think, and that’s where my different linux partitions are. I originally tried to run antiX from USB, but had to change BIOS settings to get it to boot to legacy if I recall. At that time antiX couldn’t do UEFI, so I had to load Debian and its grub recognized antiX. Then I loaded MX and its grub also would boot antiX. The only way it would boot at all was if I hit F12 when the Dell pre-boot screen was up, then select one of the legacy boot options off the blue boot menu. It used to have a Dell splash screen where I could hit F2 for setup or F12 for boot options, but I kept getting annoying Dell BIOS upgrade needed notifications under windoze, which I still need to use for running a few programs for work, and finally I told it to install it, which it did appear to do, and then it said reboot needed to complete, which I did, but all I get now is a black screen, then the grub rescue screen.

When it’s working, it really screams at over 20,000 bmips but the 4k video is very hard to read, soon to be fixed with an external 43 inch HDMI 4k TV screen sitting in a box.

ok, ls produces

(hd0) (hd0,gpt11) (hd0,gpt10) (hd0,gpt9) (hd0,gpt8) (hd0,gpt7) (hd0,gpt6) (hd0,gpt5) (hd0,gpt4) (hd0,gpt3) (hd0,gpt2) (hd0,gpt1) (hd1) (hd1,gpt8) (hd1,gpt7) (hd1,gpt6) (hd1,gpt5) (hd1,gpt4) (hd1,gpt3) (hd1,gpt2) (hd1,gpt1)

It looks like many are unknown filesystem, but some of them are ext2, but I can’t tell which is which OS

[Moderator caprea]

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But you did try to press the F2 or F12 key repetitiously during boot on the black screen ?

[Moderator BobC]

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Yes, many times. I also tried different USB’s and you can see them flashing a bit, but none will boot.

I was trying to figure out how to boot to one of the hd partitions from grub rescue, preferably the windoze one, or even a linux one to reinstall grub again, but there aren’t and decent instructions, noting that mine are “gpt” and very few examples show that.

[Moderator caprea]

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You sure also already tried, a first measure is to unplug the system, disconnect the battery and hold the power button for 30 seconds.

[Moderator BobC]

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No, they outsmarted me on that one. There is NO BATTERY to unplug!!@!

(hdo,gpt4) has antix, I can tell from the /boot dir contents, but no /boot/grub/efi dir because it wouldn;t install efi if i recall back then

[Moderator BobC]

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ok, (hd0,gpt8) is an antiX partition…

ls (hd0,gpt8)/boot/grub/

shows x86_64-efi/ as an entry, and if i do

ls (hd0,gpt8)/boot/grub/x86_64-efi/

i see lots of .mod files but they scroll off, so assume normal.mod is there, the big question is how can I boot it?

[Moderator BobC]

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no, i tried

set prefix=(hd0,gpt8)/boot/grub/x86_64-efi
set root=(hd0,gpt8)
insmod normal

but it says
error: file `/boot/grub/x86_64-efi/normal.mod’ not found

Arghhhh!

PS: PLEASE, if anyone knows how to boot after I find that normal.mod file, please type it in here, because thats where the instructions I found stop

• This reply was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by BobC.

[Forum Admin BitJam]

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Did you plug in a live-usb? Was it found by grub? There are “problems” with your system. I thought booting to a live-usb would be a safer bet. I gave you instructions for how to boot to one of live-usbs. UEFI vs Legacy does not matter at this point. That just gets you to grub, which you did.

Context is worth 80 IQ points -- Alan Kay

[Moderator BobC]

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I tried about or 6 different ones. It makes the little LED flash for 10 seconds then gives me the grub rescue prompt

[Moderator BobC]

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I read your instructions above more carefully, put the usb in, and rebooted

at the grub rescue I did ls and I can see that hd0 is referring to the flashdrive because there are now hd1 and hd2 with the partitions that were hd0 and hd1 before. But it doesn’t show different partitions like the hard drive ones, and i would have expected 2 partitions

anyway, when I do ls (hd0) it says error: invalid buffer alignment

[Anonymous]

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HTH

https://medium.com/@froositadwi/how-i-fixed-error-file-grub-i386-pc-normal-mod-not-found-b44c5ac7ff31

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/70538/grub-error-file-grub-i386-pc-normal-mod-not-found

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