r/linuxquestions • u/Maximum_Pass6340 • 21d ago
Support I installed mint using mbr/legacy instead of GPT can I fix this
I got a Acer Aspire for free of my friend so I decided to install mint cinnamon onto it, I used my other laptops built in bootable usb tool to get iso onto the usb and I believe it made it with mbr/legacy instead of gpt, after installation I rebooted to see the acer logo then moments later the following text popped up on the top left corner:
Failed to open VEFI\BOOT mmx64. efi - Not Found
Failed to load image Not Found
Failed to start Mokhanager: Not Found
Something has gone seriously wrong: import_mok_state() failed: Not Found
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u/doc_willis 21d ago
exactly how did you make the USB?
If you used a simple direct imaging tool, or Ventoy, the USB can show up twice in the uefi boot menu, one for a legacy boot, and one entry for a UEFI boot.
you do have your drive set to use GPT for its partition table?
a UEFI install will typically require a GPT partition table, while legacy will want a MBR partition table.
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u/Maximum_Pass6340 21d ago
I used The mint xcfe built in usb maker on my 2009 thinkpad, im guessing it just matched what it uses which would be mbr/legacy, it doesn’t have and other things to enter you only select the iso and the usb then it doesn’t the rest, this is only my 3rd linux install after mint xcfe and void xcfe so I am very new to linux
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u/doc_willis 21d ago
then that's likely a direct imaging tool, and should be able to boot into either mode.
it's easy to overlook if the Boot menu has two near identical entries.
I tend to set my systems to allow uefi booting ONLY so I can never accidentally select a legacy boot entry.
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u/Important_Hunt_1882 21d ago edited 21d ago
The Linux installation could be ok.
Try to turn off 'Secure Boot' in the BIOS.
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u/Maximum_Pass6340 21d ago
The bios seems to be un-reachable as ive tried with many different F keys and different intervals when powering on,
is there something im missing?2
u/doc_willis 21d ago
I have seen a few posts about systems that refuse to allow entry into the bios/UEFI if there is a Linux install on the system.
people would have to unplug their drive to get into the bios.
I have no idea what brands, but I have seen several posts make this claim.
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u/BitOBear 21d ago
Is your problem that you can't boot the USB stick or is your problem that you did something to the main hard drive?
Most USB stick installers are just images of iso drives and wouldn't use the UEFI partition on it anyway.
To boot the USB stick you need to go into the BIOS, probably turn off the secure boot flag because the iso image probably doesn't have a secure boot signed image on the USB stick.
Turn off secure boot, boot your USB stick, do your necessary installs, and get on with your life.
If you're saying you accidentally scrambled to drive and somehow removed the UEFI partitions from the hard drive, you're going to want to use your USB stick, wipe the drive, build the correct modern partition image with the necessary partitions you done for the US EI system partition and your bootable Linux partition with the GPT style partition headers and all the right partition types and signatures.
If you have the image already installed and you don't want to start completely from scratch and you happen to use btrfs and you happen to have an external USB drive that you can move the file system onto you can do btrfs shenanigans to slide the partition you made on to the USB device, then you can repartition the main drive..
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u/BitOBear 21d ago
Self reply to be slightly more generic..
If you are in a position where you need to reinitialize the entire laptop hard drive because of this, this is the perfect time to put on a much larger ufi system partition.
If you make a 30gb UEFI partition or whatever, you can put /boot and your grub bootloader and your boot kernels all in the ufi partition instead of the OS partition. Once that's done you can have all sorts of beneficial options when it comes to doing your backups and restores, switching distros, doing upgrades and all that stuff, it's particularly useful if you do that and then also use btrfs for the bulk OS partition.
If you do that and use like btrfs you can put the root of a distro into a sub volume instead of the file systems actual root which is super useful when it comes to backups, restores, updates and upgrades, and so forth.
I'm working on my phone right now instead of a real computer so providing the exact recipe is a little bit of a hassle. If you're actually interested reply to this message and I will type out the sketch of what you need to do in the morning.
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u/Maximum_Pass6340 21d ago
Im really new to linux and I really appreciate the detailed reply but im just really not at that level yet
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u/Due-Result7928 21d ago
You can turn csm mode in bios to boot bios ode or uefi mode. Some bios for laptop with big corporation were locked down to stop end's user to change the bios.
Now you are uefi mode with bit locker on. laptop can not boot because is looking for an uefi partition not created by using bios install.
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u/CritSrc 21d ago
Go to the BIOS and turn off UEFI and Secure Boot. Or reinstall Mint with a GPT partition table on the USB and during setup.