Grub Rescue -> Locked BIOS -> Unknown Filesystem (all partition)
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I have an ACER Aspire S7 laptop. I originally had to dual boot my laptop. One was for Windows OS, and another one for Manjaro Linux. The two OS occupies the two hard disk that I have. However, since my laptop is aging, I removed Windows OS and just used Arch Linux. On the previously Windows OS disk, I placed my downloaded files in there for the mean time. But, I eventually occupied my storage for my Linux OS, and I cannot uninstall or remove anything since the libraries I am using occupies too much disk space. That time, I proceeded to expand my storage for my Linux to occupy both of the disk. But then, I encountered another problem. Before, I am using LVM for both of my OS, but since I separated my two OS to two disks, I degraded my system into using only the Physical Disks. So, I was unable to expand my memory easily, which I’ve thought before was so easy, since it is just expand and shrink volume. So, I proceeded to backup my files, and prepare for installation of LVM. The procedure was:
1. Backup my Files
2. Create LVM Partition on another disk
3. Switch to the LVM Partition
4. Wipe the Physical Disk and expand the LVM Partition
So, I successfully did the first three. However, upon wiping the Physical Disk, expanding it, and upon rebooting, I entered grub rescue. My boot files were gone, and I thought I updated my grub before rebooting. But apparently, it was not updated. So, here are my problems:
1. My BIOS settings are locked. Even if I access my BIOS settings using my password, I cannot change anything, even the boot order. So, I cannot boot into my bootable drive using BIOS settings.
2. I cannot use grub rescue to boot into my bootable drive. Before, when using grub, the
ls
command successfully reads the filesystem of the partitions I have. However, on grub rescue, it always output unknown file system. I tried different combination of ls, all were unknown filesystem. I tried different combination of setting the prefix and boot variable, but insmod normal does not work. (P.S.: There are (hd0), (hd1), (hd1, gpt4) -> (hd1,gpt1), (hd2). Upon inserting bootable drive. (hd0) (hd1) (hd2) (hd2, gpt4) -> (hd2,gpt1), (hd3)).
3. I tried removing my laptop battery, and CMOS battery to refresh my BIOS settings and allow me to boot into my bootable drive. However, it turns out that on my laptop, even if I remove the battery and wait for two hours, it still does not allow me to change the BIOS settings. The Acer logo was indeed removed. I found out that my laptop has anti-theft type of thing that makes the memory persistent such that it does not refresh settings even if CMOS battery is removed for days.
My next plan is to extract the BIOS EEPROM in my motherboard and program it using CH341A programmer. Before, I do that, since it requires me to access my hardware, it is somewhat a high risk high reward situation. Is there anything I can do before I do this? Like, for example, set the prefix variable in grub rescue to access my lvm_root arch linux boot.cfg, and insmod normal, or I dunno, any other methods? Or setup a flash drive such that when it was read by the grub rescue it will instantly boot into the flash drive (I don't know if this exist. I cannot find any source)? Or any tips for doing this (I am only following youtube tutorials for now)
Asked by reallyclean-sauce
(11 rep)
Mar 30, 2020, 02:22 AM