ALERT! UUID does not exist, dropping to shell!

[jameshonke95]

Hi folks! Long time reader, first time poster

I plugged my USB stick in to my Eluktronics RP-15 running the latest Mint and then all text was replaced with squares, so I did a hard reset. The laptop seems to have had problems with destroying NVME SSD's in the past, especially in Windows, but switching to Mint seemed to have fixed the problem (and honestly I've much preferred being on Mint).

After that, I've been unable to boot and keep getting shunted to the message above. I've searched the Mint, Ubuntu and PopOS forums and most solutions seem to involve changing AHCI settings (I don't have one in the BIOS, though I tried smashing CTRL + S for a while like one solution suggested).

The other solutions seem to involve running fsck but when I boot into a LiveUSB I can't get it to recognize the NVME drive in either the terminal or in Gparted so I can't fix any partitions or even do a fresh install. I feared a dead drive, but the drive is recognized in the BIOS and I seem to be able to access Mint, I just can't get it to successfully boot from the partition.

I'm open to all suggestions and to run any suggested commands, though since I can't get the LiveUSB to recognize the drive I feel at a bit of a dead end!

[mikeflan]

I plugged my USB stick in to my Eluktronics RP-15 running the latest Mint and then all text was replaced with squares

All text where? Everywhere? The text below your icons on your desktop turned to squares??

so I did a hard reset.

You should always shutdown normally when possible.

[jameshonke95]

All text where? Everywhere? The text below your icons on your desktop turned to squares??

Yeah, literally all text. All UI elements, all windows, under icons, on the shutdown button. Everything

You should always shutdown normally when possible.

I know, but the squares made navigating quite difficult and I thought turning it off and on again would alleviate the bug.

Do you know of a way to fix it? Honestly if I could get the SSD to show in the LiveUSB I could probably figure it out from there, even if it needs a fresh install. All my documents are backed up online so starting fresh isn't the end of the world...

[mikeflan]

Do you know of a way to fix it?

No, I don't. But I would try restoring a Timeshift snapshot first.
Then turn to my full disk images.
And then maybe a fresh install.

[Wilop91]

Hello jameshonke95
Are you sure RAID is not set in your Bios?
Because I have the impression the RP-15 has RAID option....

W.O.

[jameshonke95]

Hey! Sorry, I ended up fixing it by just installing a new SSD, but even that has had ongoing issues. I've made sure RAID is definitely off but idk if there's a fault with the BIOS or perhaps the NVME controller.

It's well outside of warranty so I'm looking into a new laptop to put Mint on...