Unsolved
This post is more than 5 years old
3 Posts
0
1973
February 14th, 2019 09:00
Inspiron 3670, Debian 9, Legacy boot MBR problem
I have an Inspiron 3670 and a 3668.
I installed Debian 9 in legacy mode (mbr) and made a backup of it with rear (Relax and Recover).
I have unchecked Secure Boot and PTT and Enabled Legacy Option ROMS in the BIOS.
When I restore the image on the 3670, it won't boot. I can take the HD out of that machine and put it in the 3668 and it boots with no problem in legacy mode.
I've updated the BIOS on the 3670 and tried everything I can think of. Does anyone have any ideas before I pull all of my hair out?
Thank you,
Adam L
No Events found!
speedstep
9 Legend
•
47K Posts
0
February 14th, 2019 09:00
The 3668 and 3670 are completely different chip sets.
You cannot move drive from one machine to another.
Only the OS that the machine was sold with is supported.
That does not mean that UBUNTU or Redhat etc cannot be used.
It does mean that there is support but this is not free.
Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS (Bionic Beaver) is the current long term version.
https://certification.ubuntu.com/hardware/201711-25908/
https://certification.ubuntu.com/hardware/201610-25163/
alewis525
3 Posts
0
February 15th, 2019 05:00
Thank you for your reply, but I DID move a drive from a 3668 into the 3670 and it booted right up.
I KNEW that Dell wouldn't officially support it, but I thought maybe someone on this board had run into this problem before and might be able to help me.
alewis525
3 Posts
0
February 15th, 2019 06:00
speedstep
9 Legend
•
47K Posts
0
March 5th, 2019 07:00
Master Boot Record goes back to 1981 MSDOS. A master boot record (MBR) is a special type of boot sector at the very beginning of partitioned
computer mass storage devices like fixed disks or removable drives intended for use with IBM PC-compatible systems. MSDOS INT13 exensions. INT 13h is shorthand for BIOS interrupt call 13hex in an x86-based computer system.
Starting in Windows 10 version 1703 build 15063, you can use the MBR2GPT.EXE command line tool to convert a disk from Master Boot Record (MBR) (used in Legacy BIOS) to GUID Partition Table (GPT) (used in UEFI) without having to clean install Windows 10 or modifying or deleting data on the disk. The tool is designed to be run from a Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE) command prompt, but can also be run from the full Windows 10 operating system (OS).
If your PC or motherboard supports UEFI, then you could use the MBR2GPT tool to switch from a Legacy BIOS to UEFI Windows 10 installation without data loss.
Several Years ago Microsoft and INTEL and NVIDIA and ATI and other vendors decided that 8, 16 and 32 bit software would no longer be supported. Intel's 6th generation of processors, also known as Skylake was the last to support MBR and 32 bit software. 7th gen and 8th gen and 9th gen are WINDOWS 10 ONLY.
Specifically LEGACY Booting would not be supported and GPT would be required.
MSDOS, WIN95, WIN98, XP, VISTA, GRUB Syslinux booting are no longer supported. Microsoft made a list of approved Skylake systems that are guaranteed to run Windows 7 and 8.1 support through July 17th, 2017.
The 3670 uses 8th Gen Intel® Core™ processor and therefore MBR and Legacy booting are not EVER an option.
When booting to the Ubuntu media on a system that only has a PCIe based m2 drive the Installer cannot locate a hard drive (the installer usually only looks for /dev/sdx by default).
Add the following kernel argument at boot time:
nvme_load=YES
Press 12 when you see the keyboard prompt:
Press Enter to select Language.
Press F6.
Press Esc.
Modify the boot option to add "nvme_load=YES" and remove "quiet splash ---"
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/cosmic/man4/nvme.4freebsd.html