Cannot boot from SSD with Linux on elitebook 840 g1

[keithzFL]

Hello,

I have an dual-boot elitebook with WIN 10 and UBUNTU 23.04, which works great, but it's awfully slow for an i7. I obtained a Transcend TS128GMTS430S M2 SATAIII SSD, which is recognized by UBUNTU, but does not boot. I tried various approaches off GOOGLE without luck (boot flags, partitions...yada, yada).

When I disconnect the HDD, the BIOS does not even try to boot from the SSD, rather says no OS found. I know the boot sequence works, otherwise I would not have been able to boot from USB drive to install UBUNTU. Doesn't seem to be any BIOS options to try, so I assume it has to be how the SSD LINUX image gets created. Thoughts please.

 

[nastynarwhal]

Hello, were you ever able to figure this out? I am having the exact same issue. I've tried updating the BIOS, changing the boot flags, changing from Legacy to UEFI with and without CSM, and still nothing. I have tried other guides on Google (there aren't very many) and they don't work. 

[keithzFL]

Sorry dude, no joy. I've tried switching to UEFI w/wo CSM, copying partitions...but it just does not seem to look at the SSD card for booting. When I remove the HDD, BIOS says it can't find boot OS or something like that. Yet when I run diagnostics, it runs it on the SDD just fine, so it knows it's there. LINUX finds the SSD fine, I can see the UBUNTU install, but it just not seem to want to boot from it. 

[nastynarwhal]

Hey hey! I have finally got this working on my machine! Here's what I did:

1) Reset BIOS to factory settings

2) Disable Secure Boot

3) Set a Custom Boot option and pointed it to \EFI\grub\grubx64.efi

4) Change the BIOS mode to be UEFI without CSM

5) Set the boot order to USB drive first and Custom Boot next

6) Save all the changes and exited

7) Inserted USB with latest version of Ubuntu 22.04 and interrupted boot by pressing ESC and then selecting to boot from USB drive

8.) Installed Ubuntu normally and chose to erase the entire disk when asked how to partition the drive

9) Once finished installing, rebooted, removed USB drive when asked, and;

10) Voila! Ubuntu booted and the first thing I did was hop on this forum to share my findings.

Good luck!

[keithzFL]

Thanks for sharing Nasty. I tried some of your steps, which to me implied that you had a WIN computer at some point, no joy. How did you verify that you were actually booting from the SSD? Does it work if you disconnect the HDD?

[nastynarwhal]

I did have the machine running Windows previously. However, I have never attempted to dual-boot it. My current situation is that I wiped Windows out and am solely running Ubuntu. I  seem to have missed in your first post that you are attempting to dual-boot, so I apologize for that, as I might be giving you some false hope here.

I'm not entirely sure I understand your question about verifying that I'm actually booting from the SSD. After Ubuntu was finished installing, I removed the USB installation media and the laptop booted into Ubuntu for the first time. My previous attempts were met with the 'Cannot find an OS" error message. To clarify, I have only one hard drive inside the laptop.

Do you perhaps have both a SATA SSD and an M.2 drive inside the machine?  If so, and if you are trying to boot from the M.2 drive, there's a guide here https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/HP_EliteBook_840_G1. It's for ArchLinux but should apply to Ubuntu as well. Apparently it is the only way to get Linux to boot on these 840 G1 machines if you have an M.2 drive.

[keithzFL]

OK. Yes the post was attempting to boot from SSD.

My laptop only came with HDD and Windows, I added the SSD to get it to boot Linux. Currently it dual boots Ubuntu 23.04 off the HDD alo g with Windows 10. I'll give that link a go.

BTW, do you know what SDD you have?

[nastynarwhal]

Ahh. This is all making a lot more sense now. So again, to clarify, I don't have a drive in the M.2/NVMe slot. I only have a drive in the SATA slot. That one is a KINGSTON SA400S37120G. However, I dare to say that it seems promising that you should be able to make those changes suggested by the ArchLinux forum to get Linux to book from the M.2 drive. 

Let me know how it goes. I'm invested now!

[Jedwardsalt]

Man, did you save me some grief. This worked like a champ! Thank you!

[nastynarwhal]

You're very welcome! I'm glad I could save someone the grief!