I've been stuck with a frustrating issue while trying to switch my old work laptop to Linux. It originally ran Windows but was really sluggish, so I gave Zorin OS a shot. The installation went smoothly, but Zorin turned out to be too heavy for my laptop. So, I decided to try Linux Mint with the Xfce desktop environment. Unfortunately, I hit a snag during the install with a fatal Grub error. I thought it might just need another attempt but ended up seeing the same error repeatedly. I then tried Lubuntu and even older versions of Mint, but I kept encountering the same installation errors.
I'm starting to feel anxious because I constantly see this Grub install failure. I even went back to Zorin with the ISO that used to work, but now I'm met with the same issues. I've tried various USB drive options and methods, disabled secure boot, and ensured I'm using UEFI boot settings. Despite completely erasing the disk multiple times, the Grub install just refuses to cooperate! In desperation, I reverted to Windows thinking it might reset something, but the problem still persists when I attempt to install Linux again. I'm feeling overwhelmed and can't seem to find a solution. Can anyone help me sort this out?
4 Answers
Just a heads up: once I faced a similar situation where my backup drive was MBR formatted, and when I tried to format a new partition to GPT, everything crashed. Be careful with drive formats!
It might be worth checking how you're booting your installer USB. Sometimes it shows up in two ways: as a UEFI boot and a Legacy/MBR boot. You definitely want to stick with the UEFI option if your system supports it. Also, make sure that your target drive is using GPT partitioning for a UEFI install. Mixing UEFI and MBR can lead to issues, so double-check that! Just boot into your system and see which mode you're in using the `efibootmgr` command.
Have you tried using a SuperGrub2 disk to boot your installation? If that works, it could be as simple as needing to run an update-grub and reinstall grub after.
One thing that can help is to format your drive after trying any Linux installation. This often clears out issues and avoids errors during installation.
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