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I'm unable to upgrade or fresh install Lubuntu 14.10 (32bit) on a Lenovo Ideapad S205.

After the install or upgrade, the laptop just boot loops. Upon booting I get the Lenovo EFI splash screen, the screen goes blank and then I'm presented with the EFI splash screen again.

At first I ran the distribution upgrade, upgrading from Lubuntu 14.04 and ran into this issue. I decided to wipe the disk and install a fresh copy of 14.10, but the same issue occurs. I can install Lubuntu 14.04 32bit without issue.

If anyone could shed some light into this, that would be great!

I suspect the issue may be with the very early EFI implementation this laptop has. I've never been able to install a 64bit non-Windows OS on this laptop, but thats a separate issue. I've tried flashing the EFI to the latest version, but that didn't resolve anything.

Rubba
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2 Answers2

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EDIT:

Hello, downgrading the bootloader brought me a functional pc.

To do that you need your install medium. Boot that up and go to your command line. Then mount your system.

sudo su
mount /dev/sdXY /mnt # XY the partition you installed / (root) (for example /dev/sda2 in my case)
cd /mnt
cp -L /etc/resolv.conf etc/ # to get the internet working
mount --bind /sys ./sys
mount --bind /dev ./dev
mount --bind /proc ./proc
chroot .
apt-get update
apt-get install grub # press 'y' when generating menu.lst
update-grub
grub-install /dev/sdX # same as before but only the device not partition
grub-install /dev/sdXY # same partition as before
update-grub
reboot

When rebooting eject your install device and your system should boot up.

Old Post:

I had the same trouble upgrading my Lenovo S205.

In my case it was from Xubuntu 14.04 to 14.10 64bit. The update process went fine, but then I got also the loop on the bios/efi bootscreen.

I managed to boot my installation with another live distro (in my case Linux Mint). For that I went to the grub console of Linux Mint by pressing 'c' when the grub boot screen comes up.

Type following commands to boot in your installed OS:

set root=(hdX,Y) # find correct partition via 'ls' (root partition, same as in following step, but they have different names (in my case this was (hd0,msdos2)))

linux /vmlinuz root=/dev/sdZ ro # the root partition of your installed OS (in my case /dev/sda2

initrd /initrd.img

boot

With these commands you should be able to boot in your Lubuntu.

I did no further investigation, but it seems the Wifi is broken again after upgrading.

I hope this helps you and sorry for my bad english.

madda
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Turns out it was something odd with the BIOS not playing well with anything non-windows.

Installing the customized BIOS for the S205 below and disabling UEFI boot, resolved the boot issues, including those with installing 64bit OS - https://s205blog.wordpress.com/2014/12/31/best-bios-for-lenovo-s205/

Rubba
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