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Problems with re-installing Kubuntu 20.04 on Dell laptop

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    [Installation] Problems with re-installing Kubuntu 20.04 on Dell laptop

    Hi,

    I'm not exactly new to Kubuntu, but new enough that posting in this forum is probably the best thing to do.

    Last year I got myself a brand new laptop, a Dell G5. It was my first new computer in quite a long while. Before that I was using an older ASUS laptop on which I installed Kubuntu 18.04, that laptop came with Windows 8 pre-installed when it only was a few months old, to give some idea of how old it was. I had never any problems with installing Kubuntu on that older laptop and I'm using it now to post this question.

    Because I had enjoyed using Kubuntu on that older laptop and 20.04 was released a bit earlier, I decided to install that onto my new laptop. That went ok apart from the fact that now I received a "bios contains wgds but no wrds" message every time I switched it on. I did some research online and the message seemed harmless enough that I decided that I could live with it, as my computer was working normally otherwise. I also noticed another problem; my new Dell came with both an SSD and an HDD but for some reason Kubuntu only installed itself to the HDD leaving the SSD as it was with the Windows 10 parts installed on the SSD untouched. For some reason I never got a prompt asking me to choose between Kubuntu and Windows at start up, but it always booted directly in Kubuntu. For this reason I didn't notice immediately that the SSD was untouched. After I discovered that the SSD was not part of the Kubuntu setup I decided that I would reinstall everything when I had the time to do so.

    A few days ago I updated Kubuntu (a load of updates for the Nvidia drivers were showing up). After that I noticed some problems with starting programs - not immediately afterwards but an hour or so later. So I restarted my computer. The restart went very different as it now went to the "bios contains wgds but no wrds" message and froze there. Multiple reboots later it still froze at the same message. At that point I decided that this would be a good point to finally do that re-install.

    To make a long story short, after installing 20.04 again the computer now boots up to a Grub prompt. I think because it now recognises the Windows partition on the SSD and wants me to set up dual booting. I have no idea how to do that from the prompt, and don't really want to anyway. So my question is: how do I set up Kubuntu so that it uses both the SSD and HDD and removes all traces of Windows from the SSD so I won't have the same problem again.

    Thank you.

    P.S. For some reason the Dell refuses to acknowledge an USB with 20.04.1 on it, and I have to use one with 20.04 on it (luckily I still had the ISO). Strangely enough the old ASUS does recognise the 20.04.1 stick. (But I think it is unlikely that would cause any of the problems as described.)

    #2
    Hi there, @Daniel, and welcome to KFN. I'm sorry no one's replied yet.

    My suggestion would be to do a fresh, clean install, and this time make sure you choose 'manual' when it comes to disk usage. There, you should be able to select, partition, and format your drives as you like. Whether this will eliminate the GRUB prompt, I can't say--it's been eons since I dealt with GRUB.

    Post again if you still need help!
    Xenix/UNIX user since 1985 | Linux user since 1991 | Was registered Linux user #163544

    Comment


      #3
      Many, if not most laptops and PCs with m.2 nvme ssd drives seem to use Intel's RST raid thingy in the bios , for some reason. This does not support Linux at all, so they aren't seen by Kubuntu's installer.




      https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000131655/how-to-install-ubuntu-linux-on-your-dell-pc


      which leads to
      https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/e...pcie-m2-drives
      Particularly the need to go into the BIOS and switch from Intel's RST (raid) to ACHI for the NVME SSD drive. The rest of the instruction can be ignored.


      You will have to do some things to fix windows when doing this, however
      https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...l=1#post435198
      or
      https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubunt...-enabled/15347
      Last edited by claydoh; Jan 17, 2021, 04:23 PM.

      Comment


        #4
        I have installed Kubuntu 20.10 instead of 20.04. I still had some problems doing so, as the installer crashed every time when it finished downloading updates. So I did an install without connecting to the internet, which went well. I did all the updates afterwards, which went all without problems except that it didn't install the Nvidia 32 bit drivers which I need to run Steam. Luckily installing those drivers manually was easy enough.

        The only problem left now is that it doesn't seem to recognise the sound about half the time. But this is small problem that I'll hopefully fix soon.

        Oh, and the reason I mentioned the "bios contains wgds but no wrds" message in my original post is to give some idea where in the boot process it seemed to go wrong.

        I completed my reinstall before I saw the reply from claydoh so I might have to try that now. I'm not sure if I'll do that immediately since I first want to use my computer for bit now. But thank you anyway

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