I CAN'T BOOT MY PC!

[josefmn]

I am new to this Linux thing. Today I decided to go with Linux Ubuntu, but it was too heavy for me to keep it in my notebook, so I searched for means of booting a pen drive in Ubuntu and found out about MultiBoot USB. I installed it and installed Linux Mint on the flash drive in order to make it bootable. After going to BIOS, choosing my flash drive and pressing F10, this screen I've attached opens and when I choose the linux mint option nothing happens. The worst thing is: when I choose booting from the HD, it keeps saying “Cannot get disk parameters boot:”. What should I do? I'm unable to use my computer now!

[SuperThunder]

What happens if you remove the USB drive? Does your computer boot as normal?

Can you provide more information about your computer? (brand and model name would be good)

[josefmn]

When I remove the USB drive, it boots using the HD, as expected, but instead of saying “cannot get disk parameters” it says “booting...” but nothing happens. I've waited for a long time and it didn't boot. As of the computer, it's an Acer Aspire 5750Z, an old model, as you can see, so that's why I decided to go with Linux... Windows was too laggy. At first, I installed Linux Mint and it worked normally. However, I wanted to test Ubuntu. I could make my USB drive bootable using a native program from the distro, but when I decided to go back after installing Ubuntu and had to boot my USB driver, I installed MultiBootUSB in order to do that. The result was this I've described.

[josefmn]

I've noticed that screen shows up for a milisecond before the first picture I've sent. I was only able to catch it by recording the screen in slow motion. I don't understand what it is and neither consider it too important, but I think you should know. Thanks a lot!

[SuperThunder]

Unfortunately I'm not that familiar with multibootUSB so I can't diagnose the specific issue - I would guess something about your boot records has messed up, on both the hard drive and for linux mint.

I assume windows is installed on your hard drive. Is it important that you can boot back into it?

Usually when I get into a mess like this I back up all the important files and start from scratch.

If you have a spare USB drive and a working computer, you can install ubuntu directly to it and use it to back up important stuff from your hard drive.

[bartman081523]

please make sure that you have plugged out any external disk drives when you boot from internal hard disk. because the hard disk should not start with a cd loader (syslinux)

1. from usb, try with the second menu item, "Load Grub2 Boot Manager", from the grub2 boot manager, select the linuxmint item.

1.1 here are instructions how to repair your hard disk boot manager from a live usb. the instructions are for ubuntu and work the same for linux mint. https://howtoubuntu.org/how-to-repair-restore-reinstall-grub-2-with-a-ubuntu-live-cd

2. when your ubuntu is still intact, type in "boot:" prompt (second image) to boot ubuntu:

ls (pick out the partition that ubuntu is installed to)

set root=(hdX,msdosY) (if you have mbr partition table)

set root=(hdX,gptY) (if you have gpt partition table)

that stands for hdX e.g. hd1 or hd[number] (your hard disk) and msdosY/gptY eg. msdos1 or msdos[number] (ubuntu ext4 partition)

configfile /boot/grub/grub.cfg

your normal ubuntu boot loader menu would now show up (if you installed ubuntu successfully) when you booted ubuntu from the internal hard disk, restore your bootloader (for your first internal hard disk) with grub-install /dev/sda

[bartman081523]

@mbusb i had this issue too before. the boot sector gets overwritten by i think a loop device script from multibootusb

[mathieu-aubin]

Tip: maybe you want to use Lubuntu instead which is a light Ubuntu version... i use it to rehabilitate old laptop, along with a SSD. it just works badass.