[Discuss] Need help to get a Dell Inspiron to boot

[Yuuri]

Hi Ron and Alan,

thank you for getting back to me.

On 2018-07-09 01:36, Ron  De Beck wrote:
> Computer Bios pointing at wrong device for boot.

See my relatyed comment further down...

> Boot Flag not set on the Linux Partition.

Hm... this I need to follow up on, since I don't recall doing anything 
about setting a boot flag. I also don't see it being mentioned in the 
BIOS menu - is that something Grub needs to be told about?

> I don't recall Grub errors reporting this way.

I think it is the BIOS talking to me - this is the wording of the 
message:
"No bootable devices --
strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility. Press F5 to run onboard 
diagnostics."

F2 and F5 lead to the same "Aptio Setup Utility", which looks like your 
typical BIOS set up.

On 2018-07-09 02:05, Alan W. Irwin wrote:
> Does your laptop have an old-fashioned BIOS or UEFI?

It gives me a choice: "UEFI" and "Legacy" - currently set to "Legacy" 
and reporting "BIOS Version 4.0.7". There is no mention of "device" 
anywhere, however, when "Legacy" is chosen, there is a boot priority 
submenu, which shows the following selection: "1 USB, 2 CD, 3 Hard Disk, 
4 Diskette, 5 Net". This boot priority submenu does not show up when 
"UEFI" is chosen.

There is also a menu item "secure boot", which I recall reading about at 
the time and set to "disabled", as someone had advised. I will check 
that out once more, as well.

> If the latter, there are some tricks to installing Linux
> [...] I attach some notes

Thanks for the notes! Let me first try to fix the problem by following 
up on the boot flag and "secure boot" questions and then I'd like to try 
the UEFI route...

Thanks again - I'll be back soon!

Yuuri