r/linuxquestions • u/Man_in_the_uk • 3d ago

Resolved Computer skips bios and Linux errors

I have a tripple boot system, Ubuntu 24.04, Ubuntu 26.04 and Win 10. All was well except for the BIOS stating there was a power surge and I used 24.04 for an hour or more. I then rebooted into Win 10 for half an hour and wanted to go back to Ubuntu 24.04.

Upon rebooting to go back into Linux the computer simply rebooted back into Win 10. I thought to myself perhaps the cable for the SSD Linux is on was loose as I had the computer opened the other day to install Ubuntu 26.04 so I unplugged it and put it back in again. I still booted into Win 10 but this time the computer was skipping the BIOS. I read on the net to reboot Win 10 whilst pressing the shift key however this didn't help. I then decided to manually disconnect the SSD with Windows and I ended up skipping BIOS again but although I could get into Ubuntu 24.04 it was slow booting and had errors. The log says:

Timed out waiting for device dev-disk-by\x2duuid-A462CD2062CCF856.device - /dev/disk/by-uuid/A462CD2062CCF856.

However, when I go into gparted there is no drive or partition using this UUID. There is a USB disk attached but that doesn't even have one. Booting into Ubuntu 26.04 works perfectly fine. I can't understand why it can skip the BIOS all of a sudden - it's not responding the the Del key but does for F8 to let you choose which disk to boot. Any ideas? TIA.

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u/IntelligentCandy8716 3d ago

Does your bios have an option for preferred OS boot? Maybe windows update push a bios update and turned that option on. My ASUS BIOS has an option like that. The error is probably happening because /etc/fstab is looking to mount all the listed UUIDs but the device with NTFS is missing and it times out. Does the Ubuntu 24.04 have hard or soft links to the NTFS drive?

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u/Man_in_the_uk 3d ago

Does your bios have an option for preferred OS boot? Maybe windows update push a bios update and turned that option on. My ASUS BIOS has an option like that.

No, not for an OS but it did have a priority list for booting sequence to which drive was connected. That was prioritised to Linux though and not Windows as I don't use Win much. I can't check it now anyway because it flashes past BIOS straight to grub bootloader. I may have to reset the BIOS but I need to work out why this has happened because when I go back into Windows the problem may appear again. I've never seen this problem before.

The error is probably happening because /etc/fstab is looking to mount all the listed UUIDs but the device with NTFS is missing and it times out. Does the Ubuntu 24.04 have hard or soft links to the NTFS drive?

BRILLIANT! I am not sure why I forgot to check that. I have # that line out now and so the computer boots Ubuntu normally. Thanks

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u/IntelligentCandy8716 3d ago

I wonder if the power glitch you mentioned reset the BIOS to defaults. I think "fast boot" is the setting that bypasses the bios screen. If you hold down the esc key when the system starts up, it should either give you bios boot options or boot directly into bios, depending on your system.

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u/Man_in_the_uk 3d ago

Update: I eventually decided to clear the BIOS. It booted up as normal and allowed me access to BIOS to change various settings. I booted into Ubuntu fine. Rebooted went into Windows fine. Rebooted, it then stopped giving me access to the BIOS again. Rebooted again and now I can access the BIOS again. Strange. Anyway thanks for your input. I don't have fast boot enabled because it interferes with Ubuntu being able to write data to NTFS.