Boot/Bios Error

drichard58

I have a GR5 that has been working well for several months. Not long after I got it, I set it up as a dual boot and installed Linux Mint. That went smoothly and every thing has been good for 5 months using rEFInd for the dual boot menu.

A week or so ago, I tried to install Oracle XE on my Linux system. There were issues with the install that I could not sort out, so I re-installed Linux. Everything seemed to be OK. I do not use Windows very often. but when I tried to boot to Windows, it failed saying "unmountable boot drive". I tried the repair function and it did not work.

I tried to have it boot up from the USB Recovery, and it would not boot from there. Using the rEFInd, I was still able to boot to Linux. I tried a boot record repair, but that did not work either. Now the system is acting very strange. When I turn the PC on, I cannot enter the BIOS. It goes directly to thr rEFInd menu. From there I tell it to go to the BIOS and it re-boots and opens the BIOS. I reset the BIOS to the default and tried again to boot from the Recovery USB. It boots and tries to reco ver Windows. It can't repair it, so I chose the BOOT FROM USB. It reboots and immediate says "unmountable boot drive" and re-boots. When it reboots this time, the drives spin (including the hard drive), but nothing happens. After about 5 minutes, I did a hard re-set (held power button until machine shut down). I unplugged the power cord, waited several minutes and re-tried the process with the same results. I am still able to run Linux, but I would like to sort this out just in case it stops logging into that.

Any clues as to the issue and how to resolve it? I think it may be that my BIOS is corrupt, but I am not sure what I would need to correct that.

jdanecki

I would just suggest to clear everything down and use ONE method od booting. EITHER Windows (that support booting into Linux) OR rEFInd. Never multiple at the same time, as this leads to such issues as above.
Moreover I would also make sure on which drive you keep EFI partition - you might just have mutliple EFI partitions containing boot data and depending on BIOS/EFI priority it loads the one, that looks random for you.
That is why cleaning it completely is the best idea.