Gawain Seasoned Practitioner

what is the grub error? Pic please.

ebay for new replacement fans - many are listed for sf-314's (reckon those for 314-52 should do it, as your 55 is just a slightly diff model but basically the same except a hw config difference etc - same physical space/mb/cpu etc)

if it came with 10 oem already installed, you won't need a key as its on the uefi chip inside already and should automatically activate when you replace the drive.

probably set to RAID in the bios - change it to AHCI then the centos installer should see the disk (assuming you're not dual booting 'cause the change might screw up the other already installed OS).

in task manager, what is the process that is using the hdd so much?

yep, power on for (probably) one usb port when the laptop is shut down. My swift has the same and it doesn't have an option in the bios to turn it off (unlike on my thinkpad)....so, if you try another port for your fan, that'll be powerless after you completely shutdown. 

i had this model and its not an option so VM software cannot be run. Its worth remembering it is an amd A6 on temash architecture so runs at 1GHz, so even if VM could be enabled, it wouldn't run so well - however i did find it made an acceptable linux machine (manjaro with kde desktop environment, but gnome was way too…

its already coded on the uefi firmware chip, so a new install from an .iso from MS's website will automatically activate without the need to put the code in (assuming the laptop cam with 10 oem ver. already installed)

if you're going to do it via VM, i'd be more inclined to put it on the internal drive as i think you've got a 1tb ssd NVMe and 16 or 32gb ram (?). Purely because the internal drive is quicker than usb 3 (which is fast anyway). It won't take a large chunk of drive space and you won't need to assign a lot of memory (between…

no, it should detect the live stick (and give you the options for your internal drive), so if its not seeing the stick, something is going on with the stick. Did you use rufus to make it 'cause it's probably one of the settings on its creation that's a tad off. Might be worth making again (this quick guide shows all the…

yep, if you're fine going inside your laptop, then keep the two installs totally separate by removing the internal drive, then booting from a usb live stick with your external drive plugged in then installing to that drive - that way the you end up with a /efi partition on the external drive too (along with the boot…

nice one, glad its fixed!

it won't cost you a license as the oem 10 product code is on your uefi firmware chip inside the laptop (assuming the laptop came with 10 preinstalled). It should activate (possibly after a day or so max) after a clean install of a downloaded .iso from MS

long shot - can you enable tpm if it isn't already.

when you live boot, by using something like gparted, does that detect the disk?

can you actually "live" boot a linux usb stick? (enable f12 boot option in bios then on boot from cold, tap away on f12 with the usb stick plugged in) Does the usb driver show up along with the internal drive etc. Or does the install crash when loading the OS? etc

Mint has kernel 5.4 (I think) by default and ryzens are pretty new so i reckon thats where the issue is - MX Linux has kernel 5.6 and does support ryzen's and here's a link: for xfce use the "ahs" one, KDE has support by default. MX is basically debian buster but a lot more up to date than debs pure download, and it comes…

i found this from a previous thread about 10/deb bios issue. I had a similar issue a few years back after installing suse 42 on a swift and the bios is a tad odd. But have a read 'cause it makes sense to me: I want to share how I fixed this and what I learned about the issue. To summarise, The Acer firmware has a fault…

i'm a bit confused - if buster was installed without the first 10 drive plugged in, 10 as an option shouldn't show up in grub (unless grub was manually updated after the 10 drive was plugged back in). I'm guessing grub was updated after the install.

forgot to mention the rationale behind this - when you install deb on drive 2, the installer see's a efi partition already exists and therefore doesn't create an additional one, and i think thats what creates the little hissy fit. but by removing the ms drive, the install allows a specific /efi on the deb drive, which'll…