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Today, my Ubuntu14.04 have an auto software update, fallowed by a sudden botherboard crash. No warnings, just a sudden black screen fallowed by reboot. You can see the replica effect by this very short video. https://youtu.be/t9i7u-bcMfU

Laptop: ASUS G551JM

OS: A brand new hard disk, the Windows 8.1 enterprise (NOT OEM version) is installed first, then ubuntu14.04. Both fast boot and secure boot are disabled.

Boot: using mother board boot menu can get me to both grub menu and windows without any issue. The Windows Boot Manager option in gurb menu also worked.

I've narrowed the problem down to the grub update process and the video shows that whenever the grub gives the message of "Found Windows Boot Manager on /dev/sda2@/EFI/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi", the computer just crashed. I've tried to use the boot-repair thinking it might help, but the "sudo apt-get" installation itself will give the message for me to "sudo dpkg --configure -a", which run the grub settings and crash the computer again.

As for now, I couldn't install anything via apt-get and pretty much stuck here. (I was trying to install gstreamer-tools when the updater crashed) I would really like not to reinstall my ubuntu since I have a lot of things on ROS on this machine. Thanks for any opinion.

graham
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EwingKang
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1 Answers1

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A hard crash like that usually indicates a hardware failure, or at least something closely related to it like a driver bug or firmware issue. Thus, I recommend you first run a SMART test on the hard disk. This should squawk if it finds problems with the hard disk itself, which might be causing problems if the disk is failing.

My suspicion, though, is that it's the firmware, and in particular access to the NVRAM via the efibootmgr utility, that's causing the failure. To test this, try running sudo efibootmgr -v. If that succeeds, try making some small change to the boot setup. For instance, you're likely to see several options in the BootOrder line. Keep the first one the same and swap the order of two of the last items by using -o. For instance, suppose sudo efibootmgr -v shows:

BootOrder: 0000,0001,0002,0003

You could swap those last two items (which should have no real effect) by typing:

sudo efibootmgr -o 0,1,3,2

If this action crashes your computer, then you've identified the culprit. If I'm right, though, this may not be very helpful, since I've never heard of this specific problem before, so I can't say with certainty what the solution is. My guess is that you'll have to either update your firmware or go into the firmware setup utility and reset it to its defaults (clearing the NVRAM entries). Either action could require recovery of your boot process by using efibootmgr from an emergency boot system, by running Boot Repair, or by taking other actions.

Community
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Rod Smith
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  • Hello Rod, thanks for your suggestion. I have successfully fix the situation by dpkg repair under Recovery mode (without any knowledge about the actual cause :P). My guess is that the Recovery mode does something similar you have suggested. I really appreciate your answer. – EwingKang Dec 06 '15 at 03:36