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I'm using a hp elitebook 840 g1, I decided to switch to Ubuntu from windows 10 and I've been struggling to get it working.

I created a bootable usb using balenaEtcher and used it to install Ubuntu, I set it to erase the disk, and it appeared to work. But after restarting and removing the usb it failed to boot and is saying BootDevice not found.

The bios was set to legacy mode, so I tried changing it to uefi but that also failed with a "no bootable image found. Notebook will be shutdown" message.

I tried using the bootable usb in uefi mode but that just resulted in a stream of errors and "failed to read" messages.

I went back to legacy mode and used the bootable usb, I checked the file system on the SSD for the files needed for legacy/uefi mode and found that the Ubuntu install was set up for legacy mode.

I tried using the boot-repair tool recommended repair option, still BootDevice not found. From the info summary option, it stated that the boot files are far from the start of the disk.

I tried using GParted to add a partition to the start of the drive and used the advanced option in boot-repair to set it as the boot partition, but theres still no BootDevice.

The boot-repair info summary gave the same result afterwards. I attempted to re-install Ubuntu to see if that would magically fix it, but no luck.

Any ideas?

I didn't get a pastebin from boot-repair, but if anyone thinks it will be useful then I'll run it again.

When I get time tomorrow this is what I'll be trying:

  • Check for a bios update (if I need to do this will it be possible from the bootable usb? Or will I need to reinstall windows 10?)
  • Attempt an install with manual partitions to ensure /boot is near the start of the drive.
  • Verify the bootable usb (what would be the easiest way of doing this? bearing in mind the only way may laptop is currently working is using the usb).

Thanks in advance for any help!

Edit: I'm installing the desktop version. I was following these instructions.

I was unable to get more specific with the errors because they scrolled past too fast and I couldn't get a picture in time.

samua5
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1 Answers1

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I was able to get it working.

I set the laptop to uefi mode and used the bootable usb (I was trying to get a picture of the errors) and it booted just fine this time.

Since it worked I decided to reinstall in uefi mode. This time after restarting it was stuck in a loop, booting, showing a message saying "restart system", and booting again.

In the bios the boot options had ubuntu as an option and I was able to boot into it fine. I found online that I needed to add a custom boot path to get it to work properly so I added the path \EFI\ubuntu\grubx64.efi.

At first it didn't work because I couldn't use backslashes, but I found that the bios assumes a US keyboard layout, and using the key in the US backslash position made it work.

I still have no idea why the usb didn't work in uefi mode the first time, but everything is working fine now.

samua5
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