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I reported a bug on this issue and have had zero response

http://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2-signed/+bug/1474342

The problem is that I can no longer turn on my laptop and expect it to boot. 3.19.0-20 was the last kernel to boot. After I did an update to 3.19.0-22 I could no longer boot and the only way to boot was to hit Esc, get the list of kernels and choose 3.19.0-20 or lower.

This morning I installed 3.19.0-23 and again it won't boot. The list of bad kernels has 3 bad kernels and is still growing. This is scary to say the least and I need a solution.

One solution might be to format my disk and start over. This is clearly painful as all programs which I have will be lost. There is also the problem that perhaps there really is something wrong with these kernels for my given laptop. (On this computer they obviously work fine or I couldn't write this message.)

Please look at the bug for more details, but I really would appreciate some serious help to get my laptop back on line like a "normal" computer.

Thanks, Ilan

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I too had the same problem and it had to do with BIOS settings.

The good news is that you do not need to worry about data loss. You can take a disk image with clonezilla:

http://clonezilla.org/

go into your BIOS and delete any unused boot managers, check your disk for errors and then see if the bug happens again. If it does, clone your disk and sanitize it, then re-install.

That is what worked for me. Of course you will want to ensure that your disk is working correctly and that your BIOS is correctly configured before you do anything...

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  • First and foremost thanks for taking the time to answer. The problem is not yet solved. I went into the BIOS under the tab where I change the boot order and used F9 to set to defaults. After that I saw no change. I wanted to make sure I could boot from a disk on key to get the original Ubuntu download. I had to change the EFI boot order so the disk on key had priority, but I can boot from the disk on key.
    – Ilan
    Jul 28, 2015 at 10:03
  • I see I need more room so I'll continue to ask here. What is a mystery is if the BIOS is at fault why does dropping back to an old version of the kernel work? I would expect that the BIOS would be constant across all kernels. Maybe I am looking in the wrong place for unused boot managers. I didn't see any at all. I have my disk with 2 partitions: one "/" and the other "home". I see 2 entries for the hard disk, presumably for the 2 partitions. If you can give me some more direction and give me a guess why old kernels work, I would be very grateful.
    – Ilan
    Jul 28, 2015 at 10:11
  • It could be caused by bad sectors on HDDs. After about 2 years the reliability of HDDs decline. To scan your hard disk, there may be software built into the BIOS, or you may need to download a scanning tool, and install it to a pen drive. I recommend posting screen shots of the results of a disk scan. I' must trying to find out if this is a bug we can recreate on other machines, or if it is specific to your device. Using the most up-to-date BIOS will always improve stability, and will not erase your data. It will help me determine if it is device specific, or related to the kernel. Jul 29, 2015 at 18:40
  • Since the BIOS bothered me I asked another question askubuntu.com/questions/654014/… which basically solved the problem. Version 3.19.0-20 did report some sort of boot error on which I think I sent off one of those anonymous bug reports. In fixing the problem 3.19.0-20 was one of the kernels I happily deleted, so I can no longer test it. I looked for a disk test in BIOS and found none so I looked at the program disk which gave me size info: 99MB, 18GB, 481GB, 999MB, 1.1MB. I am always most glad to help.
    – Ilan
    Jul 31, 2015 at 4:30
  • Have you tried using Libreboot? I hear it works well with most lenovo laptops. Feb 24, 2017 at 17:21

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