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I recently upgraded my old Lenovo laptop's SSD BIOS from MBR to UEFI / GPT.
It was originally dual-booting Win-10 and Ubuntu 20.04 with Grub-2. I managed to get the Win-10 converted OK and added the Win's Boot partition, but gave up trying to boot the Ubuntu partition, so I finally erased it.
Now- I have an operational Win-10 Insider-Preview partition, and its spanking new Boot partition (NOTE! This partition must be placed BEFORE the Win partition!), and the rest of the SSD drive is empty, except for that mysterious little Windows "MSFTRES" partition that appears to have an unknown file system according to GPARTED.
Now, when I attempt to re-install any Version of Ubuntu or any Linux system that needs GRUB2, the install hangs, just after the preliminary Grub-2 menu. I choose the "Ubuntu ..." item, and the system halts with just a cursor in top-left corner. I cannot even use Ctl-Alt-Del. I have to turn the machine off and on.
But the Win-10 (on SSD) and GPARTED (booted from USB) work just fine.
I'm guessing somehow the GRUB2 cannot write on the SSD. .

aqk
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2 Answers2

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After reading the comments, I have determined you changed the partition table type to gpt. Probably all that needs to add an EFI partition to the drive (about 500MB vfat or exfat format) and then reinstall grub. Sould work after that.

Grub installs itself differently for different partition table types. Since you changed that, you should reinstall grub. man grub-install should tell you exactly how to do it. Just boot from the install media and launch a ROOT SHELL.

If you're having trouble with booting the USB flash install media, try disabling safe boot UEFI Boot and enable legacy boot , all in the BIOS setup program (Hit DEL to Run Setup, or F1).

If the Unbuntu CD/DVD doesn't have a RESCUE option, download the Debian Bullseye DVD-1, and fix the system by booting from it. Same instructions as above.

I hope you get it working! I have faith in your abilities!

Brian
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PROBLEM SOLVED!
Searching further on the internet, I came across a similar problem, from Jan, 2020: see ASKUBUNTU - which gave me the answer I needed. They suggested the USB boot disk be created with MBR, not UEFI. I had already tried this several times. But in addition, it suggested creating the USB install media with Etcher, instead of Rufus. This I did, and the Ubuntu installed properly.

Alas, I can no longer boot Win-10. But this is a small problem. (I hope!)
Grub cannot find the Win-10 boot partition, and seems to have created its own. Just a matter of marrying the Grub boot and the Win boot partitions. Next - I install another flavour of Linux on the SSD as well... after I figure out how to boot the Win-10 partition!

aqk
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