A problem I had is that the keyboard was not recognized during the boot. This means that I couldn't go to the BIOS and select anything from the Grub. I found the following topic and wanted to test it: viewtopic.php?t=343011
Uncomment means to remove # so now:
GRUB_TERMINAL=console
I did it and it is now worse: my keyboard still does not work and Linux Mint does not start anymore. I get a black screen and nothing happen (so I cannot reverse the setting). I cannot connect remotely via ssh. I created a USB boot disk but the machine does not boot on it.
I'm really blocked and have no idea how to be able to use my machine again.
Has anyone an idea for me?
Many thanks.
Last edited by LockBot on Sun Aug 06, 2023 10:00 pm, edited 3 times in total.
Reason:Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
You could try another keyboard to see if BIOS works with that.
Is the keyboard USB or ps2 or bluetooth?
If that doesn't work and you can't do anything, you might have to unplug and open up the machine, remove the CMOS battery for a few seconds, then put it back in, and try to reboot again.
If you can get into BIOS then, you can make your USB the first boot device and run Live Mint. Hopefully you made a Timeshift snapshot you can restore to? If you did, in Live Mint, run Timeshift and choose a snapshot to before you played with it.
At least, from there you'll end up with a bootable machine and can use the GUI to change keyboard settings.
Bluethooth and USB Keyboard, I tried both.
If I can access the BIOS but still cannot use any keyboard, it does not really help. I think I would need to undo the change I did in the Grub so that Mint starts correctly with the UI. I'm not sure what GRUB_TERMINAL=console means, but I think that my machine is awaiting some commands from my side but I can't.
What do you think if I tried to put the Hard-Disk into my laptop? Can it hurt it? Could it work?
GRUB won't have affected the ability of the keyboard to work in BIOS.
Some older machines did have a problem with USB keyboards being initialised in BIOS in the years that there were still PS2 ports available - but it doesn't look like that is the case with your computer.
If your keyboards aren't working at POST, then the only thing I would think is either,
a) keyboards aren't working
b) USB ports aren't working
c) BIOS has been played with
If it is a or b - then upto you to figure that out.
If it is c, then you can reset BIOS to defaults by taking the CMOS battery out as described earlier.
You'll be able to take out your hard drive and use another computer to look at it - unless you are looking to use a Windows computer AND your hard drive is formatted in EXT4. In that case it might still be possible with Windows software but you'd have to do your own research.
Best bet would be to connect hard drive up to another computer and, if it is Windows, shut windows down completely (turn off fast startup), boot into Live Mint and mount the drive you are looking to recover data from.
Thanks for your answers. Finally, I found the following forum related to my machine and the last message helped me to make the keyboard working. There is a special setting in the BIOS that deactivate the keyboard at start.
Now I will need to restore the Grub as it was before. At the moment, the normal mode does not work and I can access the menu where I can add grub commands. I'll make some searches in order to fix it, but if you have some tips, you're welcome
I didn't have a snapshot. But as I wanted to reinstall the system, this was not an issue. I made a backup of all my data and I reinstall Mint. Everything is now working well.
