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Topic: Bios not detecting other os after installing an extra os on a usb flash drive. (Read 275 times) previous topic - next topic
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Bios not detecting other os after installing an extra os on a usb flash drive.

I recently installed artix linux xfce on an external flash drive. Firstly i burned the iso on a usb, then i booted the os from there and installed the os on the other usb. Everything worked. Then after i tried to boot into my other os on the laptopi saw that the grub theme is completely different and when i tried to boot it i got and error smth like os not found. For information on my laptop i have artix and mint, mint boots perfectly, artix is the problem. I tried os prober which detects both os, grub customizer also detects both i tried updating it and refreshing nothing worked, the only way i can get my normal grub back at boot is if i choose the external usb in bios to boot from, then artix on the laptop then works. I also noticed if i run efibootmgr that it doesn't show artix just the usb and mint, it's if somehow the grub information moved to the usb.

Hope someone can give me some tips on how to solve this problem.

Re: Bios not detecting other os after installing an extra os on a usb flash drive.

Reply #1 –
Use rEFInd would be my overall advice. And try to break up your text a bit.

You've probably ended up with a Grub install on both the main drive and the USB. What you've done to which, and both, of two installs of grub is unclear to me from your description. If you want to resurrect the grub on the main drive you could try chrooting in from a live USB and reinstalling grub.

Or just download a rEFInd iso/usb image. Set the UEFI/BIOS to boot from that temporarily and (wiith the artix USB removed) boot into Mint. Reinstall grub. Or like I suggest install rEFInd.
 

Re: Bios not detecting other os after installing an extra os on a usb flash drive.

Reply #2 –
You could run grub-install from Artix or select it in your BIOS UEFI boot menu choices, so Artix Grub becomes the default, and enable os-prober in /etc/default/grub and then run update-grub. Or do something similar in Mint to use that Grub. If anything is complicated like installed on a BTRFS subvolume then os-prober might not work and you'd need to create a custom menu entry, also you could in some cases have to mount the relevant unmounted partitions for the other OS before os-prober runs. If you have a boot partition check it is / was mounted on boot, sometimes you can install grub to /boot then find the partition wasn't mounted and then gets mounted later so obscures the contents, for example, and check your efi partition is correct and you didn't make an extra one by accident and so on.