Hey everyone! I'm a newbie to Linux, and my partner, who's got some experience, suggested I try out Mint. We had a USB that worked fine for them a couple of weeks ago, so I thought I'd go ahead with a dual boot setup. Initially, I planned to partition, but then I decided to back everything up and just remove Windows 11 entirely.
After backing up in Windows, I ran into a 'mok_state' error, which I managed to fix by renaming a grub file while the USB was connected.
Now, I'm facing a new challenge—when I try to boot, I get a message saying 'load kernel first,' and I can't seem to find a way to fix it. Any advice would be super appreciated!
2 Answers
Did you make sure to disable secure boot? It can sometimes cause these issues when installing Linux.
I had this issue on one of my PCs as well. Here are a few things you could try:
1. Turn off secure boot in your BIOS settings.
2. Reflash your USB stick with the Mint image—using Rufus is a good choice if you haven't.
3. Consider creating a Ventoy drive instead; it's pretty convenient to use.
4. Switch USB drives or ports; sometimes USB 2.0 can be more stable, even if it’s slower.
I know how frustrating this can be! I ended up switching to Ubuntu on that PC instead, but I hope you can get Mint working!
I’m also trying to set up a dual-drive system with Mint and I’m getting the same 'load the kernel first' error. Any ideas on what could be going wrong?