I have attempted to dual boot Ubuntu alongside Windows 11 on my Acer Spin-5 laptop. Everything seemed fine and dandy at first; I created a live USB, installed Ubuntu, and it actually booted up without the USB and was working!
This is where the trouble began. At some point when I was away from the computer, it had been turned off. I'm not sure if it was a hard shut-down (like holding the power button) or if the computer had been turned off from in the software, however on reboot, Linux started displaying the "Minimal Bash-like" error which I've seen is very common. I also loaded windows and noticed that it had gone into recovery mode.
I have tried several approaches to try to fix this myself, but not a single online or posted fix has worked for me thus far.
The following is what I've tried in order:
- Tried using boot-repair in the live USB, however the only option boot repair gave me was to make a report. It didn't seem to even recognize a problem.
- Checked my Partitions (Linux System is in /dev/sba5 with 40G of space.)
- I used a guide specifically for Acer spin-5 laptops to install Ubuntu, which is apparently tricky. The guide said that I would need to change the SATA mode to AHCI through Windows Command prompt, which I did, however this did not help the installation either.
- I attempted the method of mounting a root partition using sudo mount to my /dev/sba5 partition and installing grub, however this did not seem to work either (I have a UEFI system).
- I attempted to simply reinstall Linux using the live USB, however where the installer should have had the option to re-install Linux, it only gave me the options to erase disk, install alongside Windows, and something else.
- Finally I simply tried deleting the partition /dev/sba5, the Linux System File, using fdisk so I could just completely start over, however fdisk didn't recognize the partition even existing.
At this point I'm not sure where to go from here and I really appreciate any help that I might get. I will continue to update this thread as I try different solutions and receive feedback as what to try. Thanks so much for reading and any advice that you may give! :)
Resources
Acer guide: https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/876353/#Comment_876353
Bash-like error fix: https://www.linuxfordevices.com/tutorials/ubuntu/fixed-minimal-bash-like-line-editing-is-supported-error
Reinstalling Linux: https://itsfoss.com/reinstall-ubuntu/
Updates:
- I tried typing exit into the minimal prompt however no error message appeared. The computer just seemed to restart and boot directly into the minimal prompt as it did before. Thanks user68186 for the first attempt lol! :)
- So I think the problem may be a result of either not having all the files required to boot present on my disk or perhaps it may be bad file locations, as in GRUB doesn't know where to look to load the kernel. The following are my partitions accessed through my live USB and there will be a picture of the set command while in GRUB.
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l
Disk /dev/loop0: 2.33 GiB, 2502324224 bytes, 4887352 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk /dev/loop1: 4 KiB, 4096 bytes, 8 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk /dev/loop2: 61.89 MiB, 64901120 bytes, 126760 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk /dev/loop3: 155.63 MiB, 163188736 bytes, 318728 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk /dev/loop4: 248.76 MiB, 260841472 bytes, 509456 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk /dev/loop5: 45.86 MiB, 48087040 bytes, 93920 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk /dev/loop6: 43.63 MiB, 45748224 bytes, 89352 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk /dev/loop7: 81.26 MiB, 85209088 bytes, 166424 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk /dev/sda: 238.47 GiB, 256060514304 bytes, 500118192 sectors
Disk model: HFS256G39TND-N21
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: D1FF29AD-6B22-4C76-A90D-2203D0A78407
Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sda1 2048 206847 204800 100M EFI System
/dev/sda2 206848 239615 32768 16M Microsoft reserved
/dev/sda3 239616 414169586 413929971 197.4G Microsoft basic data
/dev/sda4 498020352 500117503 2097152 1G Windows recovery environment
/dev/sda5 414171136 498020351 83849216 40G Linux filesystem
Partition table entries are not in disk order.
Disk /dev/sdb: 3.75 GiB, 4026531840 bytes, 7864320 sectors
Disk model: UDisk
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 18929DE9-0851-4C8A-8A1B-CE3271B13118
Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sdb1 2048 7864286 7862239 3.7G Microsoft basic data
Disk /dev/loop8: 284 KiB, 290816 bytes, 568 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes