[Solved] Mint won't boot up - Boot Device Not Found

[bassistguy]

I have been using Mint Cinnamon as my main Distro since 2015, which coincides with my laptop I purchased at that time (HP EliteBook 8460p). Since my laptop purchase, I have installed every version of Mint Cinnamon starting with version 17. I have never had a problem with the installation process on this laptop. I even purchased an SSD about 3 years ago and had no issues installing Mint. I usually dual boot Mint and Ubuntu Studio. I had Mint Cinnamon 20.1 installed.

A few days ago, I realized I was running out of space on my home partition. So, I completely wiped my drive and created new partitions for Mint in order to allocate more space for my home partition. I downloaded Mint Cinnamon 20.2. I installed it and then proceeded to restart my laptop. Upon restart, I got the dreaded message "Boot Device Not Found". So, I decided to try re-installation... same message. What is messed up is I tried installing just Ubuntu Studio, as well as KDE Neon to see if I got the same message, and I did. I did multiple searches and almost every search result mentioned EFI / UEFI. This laptop is from 2011 or 2012. I have never had UEFI boot enabled (I can enable it, but I get a message saying it is experimental).

For troubleshooting, I tried enabling UEFI boot, but that did not work. I also tried grub-install from a live USB, and that didn't work. I also reset my BIOS to defaults with no luck. I also tried creating the partitions using GParted instead of via the Mint installation, no luck.

From the multiple searches I did, I ran across "gdisk". I just ran gdisk by itself to see if there was a GPT partition, and there is:

Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present

From my understanding, GPT works with UEFI. Does my installation possibly think this is UEFI? Also, I'm not 100% sure what "Protective MBR" means, but from what I read it works alongside GPT?

I'm thinking my MBR is either not present, or corrupted somehow. I kind of wish I would have just kept my original root partition . BTW, the only way I can boot up my laptop is by booting in to Super Grub first. So, I know grub is at least working at this point. Additionally, this is the only OS on my laptop right now.

Any suggestions on what could be causing this?

[Moonstone Man]

... I completely wiped my drive ... re-installation... same message ... Ubuntu Studio ... KDE Neon to see if I got the same message, and I did...

Any suggestions on what could be causing this?

A dead, dying. or soon to be completely dead, drive should be your primary suspect. You can check for loose connections first though.

[bassistguy]

A dead, dying. or soon to be completely dead, drive should be your primary suspect. You can check for loose connections first though.

I thought about that, but I've been running this installation for a few days with no issues (booting via Super Grub). I thought about just those boot sectors being bad, but I ran both smartctl and badblocks; both showed no errors. I have a spare SSD that I am going to test an installation on tomorrow.

[Moonstone Man]

... but I ran ... smartctl ...

Just be aware that smartctl is only a rough guide and that a drive can fail even though the SMART values are within tolerance. One other thing you can do is boot from a live media and run e2fsck:

sudo e2fsck -vfp -C 0 /dev/sdX, where d is the device and X is the partition number.

[bassistguy]

sudo e2fsck -vfp -C 0 /dev/sdX, where d is the device and X is the partition number.

Well, I installed Mint on my other SSD, and sure enough, it booted right up. I guess my main SSD is going bad. Sucks because it's only a few years old.

As an FYI, I also booted in to a live USB and ran that command on my main SSD. This is the output I received:

mint@mint:~$ sudo e2fsck -vfp -C 0 /dev/sda
e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
The superblock could not be read or does not describe a valid ext2/ext3/ext4
filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2/ext3/ext4
filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else), then the superblock
is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock:
e2fsck -b 8193 <device>
or
e2fsck -b 32768 <device>

Found a gpt partition table in /dev/sda

[Moonstone Man]

Well, I installed Mint on my other SSD, and sure enough, it booted right up...

Thank you!

You're welcome.

[bassistguy]

A dead, dying. or soon to be completely dead, drive should be your primary suspect. You can check for loose connections first though.

Good morning. Just wanted to throw a final update in here. I bought a new SSD this morning and my installation is booting right up with no issues. Your help is much appreciated! Marking as solved.

[bassistguy]

So, I think I found the real reason why I was having issues while booting. I was curious about something and was able to successfully replicate this issue on my new SSD.

A few months ago, I decided to try out KDE Neon. I installed it, and I got the same error when I rebooted (Boot Device Not Found). I could never get the issue figured out. So, I reinstalled Mint Cinnamon. It installed with no issues and I was able to boot my laptop with no issues.

I was curious and installed KDE Neon on this new SSD. Lo and behold, same issue (boot device not found). I tried installing Mint again... same error. So, this turned out to be user error on my end. Apparently when I installed KDE Neon on my old SSD months ago, it somehow changed the partition to GPT. I'm assuming since Ubuntu Studio was already installed, the MBR still existed, so when I re-installed Mint, it saw the MBR and I was able to boot in to Mint.

This time around when I completely wiped my drive on my old SSD, I did not format to a brand new partition; I just deleted the root and home partitions. So, the partition was still formatted as GPT and the MBR was gone at that point.

I just re-installed my old SSD, completely removed the old partition and reformatted as an empty file system. Once I attempted to install Mint again, it created the partition as MBR, it installed and I was now able to successfully boot in to my installation . So problem solved, but user error. Thanks again!

[SimonPeter]

Also, I'm not 100% sure what "Protective MBR" means, but from what I read it works alongside GPT?

I'm thinking my MBR is either not present, or corrupted somehow.

"MBR" (Master Boot Record) refers to the first 512 bytes of your storage medium.
MBR partition table means that info about your partitions is stored in your MBR.

MBR partition tables have some drawbacks -- 2TB max size, max 4 primary partitions, no backup in case first 512 bytes are destroyed.......

So, people made GPT. It has practically infinite (as of now) size limit, 128 partitions max, secondary GPT as a partition table backup etc.,

Now, there are really old systems which can read only a MBR partition table. They don't know about GPT and may facilitate wiping the GPT partition table, leading to data loss.

So, we have a protective MBR on all GPT storage media -- so that old systems which can read only a MBR partition table know that there is something there, and don't facilitate wiping the GPT partition table, leading to data loss.