Legacy/UEFI Issues [SOLVED]

[TechLikeAGirl]

I've used Linux Mint for a few years, I was using it on a POS Toshiba, then about 2 months ago I bought a Dell Latitude E6410, just swapped my hard drive from the former to the latter. Occasionally when I booted, it would blank out upon booting with some error that I never got to investigating, with a "grub rescue message". I would hit the power button, restart, get the "your machine did not shut down properly, which option do you want" then i would choose my Mint 18 and be on my way.

Fast forward to the 18.3 Mint update, chose to update because why wouldn't I, restarted my computer, got to the grub rescue message. I hit the power button, restarted, and this time, back to grub rescue. I've read these forums, tried the boot-rescue everything, no go. I get the "file '/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod" not found, I have searched my file system, found it. I discovered my new(er) laptop may be compatible with UEFI, but when I tried to install Linux under that, I get a root file system not specified error. I've tried the ins normal.mod code, no go. It's been over a month with banging my head against a wall trying to get my OS working again.

I've been able to work normally with the Mint 17 boot cd.

The URL from the boot repair. It was noted that it indicates secure boot may be enabled. In BIOS, I only have 2 options: Legacy or UEFI. There are no other options for secure boot or other boot options.
http://paste.ubuntu.com/26394403/

[catweazel]

Legacy is BIOS boot. UEFI is probably secure boot but I'd advise checking again for an option titled Fast Boot. If you find a Fast Boot option, turn it off.

You can always select Legacy and try a reinstall after backing up your treasured stuff.

[prestonR]

You're trying to make a drive that has an 32 bit OS installed in Bios mode work on much newer 64bit Uefi hardware. You may get it to work but, for a start, only just over 3GB of ram will be recognised, no matter how much is installed and an ever increasing number of software won't be available on 32bit anymore: Chrome browser, skype, and so on.

Mint installs work by primarily using 'bundled' open-source drivers for your hardware. On some hardware, and heavily depending on the graphics demands of your chosen desktop environment, this 'one-size-fits-all' approach will get you a nicely working system. If you have 2 machines that fall into this category there's a good chance that you can swap the drive between them.
However, nvidia and newer amd graphics running more demanding desktops like Cinnamon or Kde won't work sufficiently on the bundled drivers and will need the proprietary drivers installed that are offered by 'Driver Manager'. The same with wifi cards, some won't work with the free drivers. Once these proprietary drivers are installed you've tied the install to the machine's hardware, no more swapping unless you purge them again and return to the open source ones.

A Mint install doesn't take longer then 20min. Do yourself a favour and start afresh with a system that utilises your new hardware properly instead of wasting time trying to reincarnate your 'relic'.

[Moem]

You may even be able to copy your entire home over to the new installation. I did that while moving from 17.3 32-bits to 18.2 64-bits, and had very few problems: two minor applications had double entries in the menu now, only one of which worked as it should. The b0rked ones were easily removed.
That was quite a jump but it worked well and saved me lots of time! As soon as I installed an application, it found its retained settings and worked as before.

I cannot guarantee that this will work for you, too. It's a pretty daring experiment. I'm just saying that this is what I did.

[TechLikeAGirl]

I apologize for the delay in response...

I appreciate all of the advice you guys have provided me. I am going to try Preston's recommendation of reinstalling Linux Mint, the 64-bit version. I don't have preference between Legacy over UEFI, I just want a properly working system. The easiest way it seems for me is to go with UEFI.

I have a question before I install anything, what's the best way of installing this so it utilizes UEFI? I have a screenshot of my installation options for my Linux boot CD, and earlier I chose to run off the HDD, choosing the UEFI boot and received a boot error of no OS found (which i was not expecting that boot to be successful anyway, I just wanted to see what it would do).

[prestonR]

what's the best way of installing this so it utilizes UEFI?

Make sure this

In BIOS, I only have 2 options: Legacy or UEFI

is set to UEFI and the 'boot order'/'boot sequence' has the drive that you're going to install Mint to on top, eg:

Hdd (where you want Mint)
Hdd other
Networkboot
Whateverelseboots

[TechLikeAGirl]

OK my progress so far:
I created a 64-bit install cd for Linux Mint 18.
I did some more research and found out that my laptop does not allow for disabling of secure boot (https://www.dell.com/community/General/ ... -p/4013347)

So I did more work myself, to convert my system to UEFI. Yesterday I moved around partitions as per this article: https://askubuntu.com/questions/84501/h ... 4513#84513
That took 4 hours. But it worked so far as to confirm that my main partition is now UEFI. I am now about to enter Part 3 of these steps, installing GRUB.

[TechLikeAGirl]

I realized I may have been overthinking the process, and instead I went into BIOS, chose UEFI. It only had a boot option for the disk drive, so I added HDD. Installed, followed all warnings that once I chose UEFI there was no going back.

Once installed, I took out the install CD, restarted, and all seems to be working well. I will consider this solved, and I thank everyone for the advice!!

[Spearmint2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_E ... _Interface

Use 64 bit OS on UEFI systems with GPT drives. If you install a 32 bit OS in Legacy Mode, you have to switch between it and the UEFI installed OS in the BIOS first.

https://www.howtogeek.com/193669/whats- ... g-a-drive/

[TechLikeAGirl]

I installed the 64-bit version of Mint onto my HD, which is more compatible with my system. There was no UEFI OS installed originally on the HD. If I remember correctly I bought the HD blank, and installed Mint on it when I first bought it years ago. I simply swapped it out of my old Toshiba Satellite which probably was not a UEFI system, as was made clear when I began to immediately have issues using it on this new UEFI based system.

I have been playing around with settings, installed all updates, restarted a few times to make sure everything works, without a single issue, so I'm considering this solved.