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I have a new Alienware laptop and am trying to set up dual booting for Windows 10 and Ubuntu. I followed steps I found online to run safeboot using 'bcdedit /set {current} safeboot minimal' , but after switching the SATA Mode Operation, every time I boot up my computer it boots up into SupportAssist and is unable to find a drive. What can I do to fix this and be able to dual boot? Thank you in advance for your help!

JSON K.
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1 Answers1

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Have you tried boot-repair from a live Ubuntu USB flash disk?

Full instructions here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair . Follow the 2nd option (install boot-repair in Ubuntu).

wyphan
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  • I have not yet. I have not installed Ubuntu yet because I did not want to mess anything up with Windows. Would I be okay if I switched back to RAID or would that break things further? I can boot up Ubuntu now but not Windows. Or I guess what is the best course of action now? Can I go back to Windows still or is the only way to fix it with boot-repair? – JSON K. Jan 11 '21 at 19:49
  • Your problem seems to be an empty BCD. The proper way to recreate the Windows entries would be through a Windows installer ISO/USB, but I doubt you have access to that. I think boot-repair should be able to pick up the Windows installation too and fix the problem. Alternatively, boot-repair can also install GRUB for you. – wyphan Jan 11 '21 at 19:54
  • I read this here that I didn't do the first time around: https://askubuntu.com/questions/932997/why-cannot-the-ubuntu-installer-recognize-my-ssd/933042#933042 . Would Windows work again on RAID so I could try it out? – JSON K. Jan 11 '21 at 19:55
  • I don't have a Dell/Alienware laptop myself so I cannot test. It doesn't hurt to try though. Good luck! – wyphan Jan 11 '21 at 19:57
  • No problem and thank you for your help. I just tried and it booted back into Windows safe mode. I wonder what I did wrong with following the steps of first putting windows into safe mode and then switching to AHCI. – JSON K. Jan 11 '21 at 20:00
  • Have you updated UEFI and SSD firmware? Do you really have two drives in RAID, or just one drive? If two drives you cannot turn off RAID. In Windows you need fast start up off. – oldfred Jan 11 '21 at 20:38
  • I think it's just the one drive in RAID – JSON K. Jan 11 '21 at 20:44
  • Is there a way to check? When I went to Ubuntu to install on AHCI, it gave me 3 options for the disk to install it on, but it didn't have the labeled drivers. I think I know which one it is but I would rather not accidentally write over Windows – JSON K. Jan 11 '21 at 21:32
  • If you select "Try Ubuntu", then open a terminal window, lspci -v should tell you that. There should be [AHCI mode] somewhere in the output. For example, mine says 00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 21) (prog-if 01 [AHCI 1.0]). In contrast, on my desktop, which has AMD RAID enabled, it says 01:00.1 RAID Bus controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 43bd (rev 01) (prog-if 01) – wyphan Jan 13 '21 at 21:08
  • I'm not too famililar with Dell/Alienware's RAID implementation. On my desktop, the only way to check the number of drives is through the BIOS/UEFI menus, because AMD's RAID driver doesn't make it transparent to the system. Otherwise, lsblk would be the way to go. – wyphan Jan 13 '21 at 21:19