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I am trying to dual boot windows and ubuntu on a razer blade 15 advanced (2021). I had a lot of issues with 20.04 (mainly nvidia drivers not working) and after days of troubleshooting I have decided to switch to 21.10. I have confirmed that 21.10 fixes all the driver issues I was having, however, I have noticed something strange.

If I create a boot disk with 20.04 it can see my secondary drive with windows, however, the 21.10 installer does not detect this drive at all. I have looked through many posts and tried turning on and off secure boot, I see lots of posts about RAID but I don't have that bios option and it seems like a dell issue.

Furthermore, it seems that grub does not work properly. It launches into grub minimal terminal and I have to exit to get out of it.

Edit: After some additional investigation I have found that both 21.04 and 20.04 can detect the other ssd (with lsblk or fdisk) but not 21.10. I found another post that describes this issue, however, they only say that they downgraded the kernel or used the previous versions of ubuntu which I was having trouble with.

cmxu
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  • (1) Make sure Fast Startup is disabled in Windows. (2) Because you've been experimenting there are probably more than one entry for Ubuntu in UEFI > Boot, please check and try other. – ChanganAuto Oct 20 '21 at 02:59
  • It sounds like your pc's EFI is not set to boot off nvme drives. I had the same issue and solved it by putting the EFI and boot partitions on a regular hard drive and doing a 'something else' install. – Bill Miller Oct 20 '21 at 03:02
  • This is what showed me how to do it https://askubuntu.com/q/1074098/1477783 – Bill Miller Oct 20 '21 at 03:04
  • Thanks for the comments, I will try tomorrow and report back! I think I already disabled fast startup,but you may be right about the uefi although I have nuked the drive to retry the install – cmxu Oct 20 '21 at 04:09
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    Many even new systems, have to update UEFI firmware & SSD firmware. Windows also turns fast startup back on with updates, so double check that setting. – oldfred Oct 20 '21 at 13:23
  • @ChanganAuto Thanks for the comment, I have been able to confirm that I have turned off fast startup in both windows and in the bios. I have also tried the other entires in the UEFI, but that does not fix the problem at the core which I described in my edit. – cmxu Oct 20 '21 at 18:57
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    @BillMiller Thanks! But my pc should be fine to boot off nvme drives as it works already for windows and I have confirmed that it also works for previous versions of Ubuntu, so I don't think that would be an issue. – cmxu Oct 20 '21 at 18:58
  • @oldfred I reconfirmed that fast startup is turned off, but also I have tried 20.04 and 21.10 without restarting windows in between and have confirmed that it works on 20.04 but not 21.10, so it shouldn't be a fast startup issue. – cmxu Oct 20 '21 at 18:59
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    Based on your question and the question you linked, it looks like a kernel bug. Stick to the LTS version of Ubuntu, or wait until the bug is fixed in the kernel update for 21.10. You may also want to file a bug report. – user68186 Oct 20 '21 at 19:17
  • @user68186 Sounds about right. I wish I could stick to LTS but I can not get nvidia drivers to work. Where would I submit a bug report? – cmxu Oct 20 '21 at 19:36
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    See How do I report a bug? – user68186 Oct 20 '21 at 19:57

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I've had exactly the same issue with a new Razer Blade 15 Advanced (mid-2021). While attempting to create a Windows/Ubuntu dual boot setup ... LTS (20.04) Ubuntu-based distros all are able to see the internal nvme drive but suffer from a lack of driver support (wifi and the nvidia drivers, for example). Meanwhile, the most recent 21.10 distributions run great with the live cd and are able to detect the wifi hardware, but fail to see the internal nvme drive and therefore cannot be installed.

I eventually was able to get a satisfactory setup running on my Razer Blade 15 by installing the 20.04 LTS release (in my case I installed Kubuntu with wired internet connection). After finishing the install I upgraded directly from 20.04 to 21.04 "Hirsuit Hippo" and installed all the available updates.

WARNING: Do not upgrade any further than this... I did try upgrading again to 21.10, but the system was not able to see its own installation drive and could not boot. That being said, 21.04 with the nvidia-470 drivers seems to work really well.

fwiw I've also filed a bug report here

Reu
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