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When trying to boot into Ubuntu on a refurbished Lenovo ThinkPad t440 I'm getting a bunch of errors, it won't boot and the entire thing takes forever.

This is after already returning one laptop and getting a replacement. On the last one I couldn't even boot into a live USB any more though which I can do this time. So I ran a smart check

Secure boot and rapid boot are turned off in the BIOS.

The windows 10 install I wanted to install in dual boot doesn't run from GRUB (which isn't too bad as I didn't actually plan to use it other than for diagnostics).

Is the drive faulty or am I doing something wrong? Feels weird that the same thing happened on two separate laptops.

Update: Now can suddenly not boot into the live usb anymore even though I changed nothing. The firmware bug error is in the comments.

Update2: live usb boot works again in uefi only mode.

Last update: returned the laptop and going to look for a non refurbished one as it is looking more and more like hardware issues.

MariusR
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    Did you install UEFI or legacy BIOS boot loader? – kukulo Aug 16 '18 at 17:00
  • I just went into the BIOS and set it to boot only UEFI which caused no OS to boot... So I guess legacy. Could this be the issue? – MariusR Aug 16 '18 at 17:09
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    Can you boot live usb or cd and run file system check? – kukulo Aug 16 '18 at 17:22
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    https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/347280/how-to-perform-full-check-of-ext4-file-system-structure – kukulo Aug 16 '18 at 17:22
  • Well I could a minute ago but now I'm back to the same state as the last laptop were doing anything with the live usb just displays "[Firmware bug]: TSC_DEADLINE disabled due to Errata; please update microcode to version: 0x20 (or later)" and doesn't go any further. – MariusR Aug 16 '18 at 17:37
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    Does it help when you turn off and remove the battery and power on again? – kukulo Aug 16 '18 at 17:43
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    Also check this : https://askubuntu.com/questions/984970/firmware-bug-tsc-deadline-disabled-due-to-errata-what-should-i-do-about-thi – kukulo Aug 16 '18 at 17:44
  • I managed to boot to live usb again by booting with uefi only and not in legacy. After running the command with vf i got: https://imgur.com/a/RzBSiR9 – MariusR Aug 16 '18 at 17:46
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    The problem is that your OS was installed in legacy mode and your laptop boots UEFI. Try to reinstall the OS from USB in the UEFI mode. – kukulo Aug 16 '18 at 17:53
  • Well I tried to rerun the installation while I was already in the live usb. The result is the bios not finding the boot order and resetting itself. When opening the boot switcher I now have two Ubuntus that both don't start. Booting with legacy and uefi enabled makes grub go into rescue mode. I could likely reinstall and even make it delete the entire drive while doing it (seeing as nothing boots anyways) do you think this'll help and how to make sure it will be installing in uefi mode? – MariusR Aug 16 '18 at 18:10
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    When you enable the UEFI mode and install the entire drive, the Ubuntu should recognize it and install in UEFI mode. You need to reinstall the whole drive. – kukulo Aug 16 '18 at 18:57
  • After reinstalling and restarting I now am back to the boot taking long and then just showing the I/o errors I described in my OP – MariusR Aug 16 '18 at 19:53
  • Oh and btw. I now seem to not be able to boot from usb without removing quit splash from the boot script if that helps. – MariusR Aug 16 '18 at 20:16
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    Which boot script? Do you mean the Grub options? – kukulo Aug 17 '18 at 05:31
  • Yes exactly. Replacing quit splash with nomodeset in the live usb allowed me at least to boot. I'm beginning to think that the refurbished laptop might contain replaced part that are incompatible with Linux distros so I'll likely return it tomorrow or do you think otherwise? – MariusR Aug 17 '18 at 06:55
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    There is another answer on askubuntu for the t440p type where a downgrade of the Bios helped from V 2.22 to 1.14. – kukulo Aug 17 '18 at 09:03
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    https://askubuntu.com/questions/454268/lenovo-thinkpad-t440p-ubuntu-12-04-14-04 – kukulo Aug 17 '18 at 09:05
  • I decided I'll return the laptop while I still can without problems. The bios version mentioned isn't even available anymore. And even if it would work I feel like the resulting system wouldn't be the most stable one. I feel like the hardware used in the refurbishment of the laptop wasn't the best or Linux compatible type. I'm gonna look around getting a non refurbished new laptop like a dell XPS or a ThinkPad X1 Carbon or something along those lines. Thank you for helping me so much. You are a saint. – MariusR Aug 17 '18 at 18:10

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