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I started having problems with ubuntu 18.04 forcing me to fsck the boot drive every other time I turned my desktop pc on. I figured maybe it's not supported anymore, so I went for 20.04. However it wouldn't let me upgrade or even apt update, so I had to do it the old fashioned way.

For a while, it behaved until I started getting fsck demands again, and sometimes I have to reboot several times just to get to the fsck request because it will freeze on a black screen while booting. Sometimes it would take over ten minutes to boot, only to leave me with reset settings that I'm locked out of editing.

Now, it won't even find my OS and is cycling "checking media presence". I don't get this, as the installation is on a wiped drive and less than 3 months old. I haven't messed around in the terminal, and the hard drive came with my pc, it's less than 5 years old.

I tried the dmesg command and almost everything was red, most of it saying that it was locked or something.

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  • When ubuntu wants fsck at boot it is because the filesystem is in error. Often the problem is that the system wasn't shut down correctly (hard power off or crash) or that there are errors on the disk. Also that os ofte4n isn't found indicates disk problems. If the disk is a SSD it could also be that the firmware needs to be updated on the disk. Also check if there are a newfirmware to your motherboard.
    – Soren A
    Jun 19, 2021 at 12:05
  • Maybe your hard drive is dying. Maybe not; lots of possibilities. Narrow those possibiloities: Look up how to turn a SMART test on your hard drive.
    – user535733
    Jun 19, 2021 at 12:25
  • Make sure you have good backups. Drives do fail.
    – oldfred
    Jun 19, 2021 at 13:51
  • I think you need to edit your post and provide some more details about what is shown on the screen (for instance dmesg). Also, tone down on the exclamations, it's not going to help.
    – Artur Meinild
    Jun 19, 2021 at 15:57

2 Answers 2

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Possible reasons:

  • Hard drive dying (most likely),

  • Disk full, intensive swap usage damaging the disk(?),

  • Bad install disk (edit, as suggested by @Jamie).

Save asap any important data, and consider replacing the disk.

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  • Less than 20gb used on the terabyte ssd (excluding games, which I can redownload), but I have been expecting this for a while, so I've been making daily backups on a new external 750gb ssd. I'm going to try a clean install, and if this happens again, I'll make a new install disk and install on my 750gb ssd. Thanks for the quick reply.
    – Elizabeth Anne Attaway
    Jun 19, 2021 at 16:21
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This question is incredibly broad. This could be happening due to a faulty hard drive, a corrupted OS, anything. This solution may not work. It's just my best inference.

What most likely happened is that the USB you are trying to/did install Ubuntu on had corrupted files. The easiest solution is to make a new bootable USB with Ubuntu or any Ubuntu flavor on it. Use UNetbootin to make the bootable USB, and preferably get a new USB just in case the old one was damaged. Format the USB before taking any action.

Resources for further help:

Please note that uninstalling an OS is risky. Also, you must have a seperate OS/device to make the new bootable USB before doing anything. You're screwed if you uninstall Ubuntu with no bootable USB to download it again from.

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