Unable to boot into BIOS with Pop!_OS dual boot Acer Nitro 5 AN515-54-549R with Windows11 installed

I have an Acer Nitro 5 AN515-54-549R with Windows 11 installed on a 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD with a second stock 128GB Kingstone M.2 NVMe.

I wanted to dual boot Pop!_OS alongside windows but install it on its own SSD (The kingstone drive). All installed successfully with Windows 11 as the default boot option. I can press F12 and load the boot order and manually boot to Pop. That's all fine, but when I try to boot BIOS via F2 I am greeted by a black screen with a single - line that flashes. I have tried leaving it for a couple hours to see if it would eventually bot but alas no. I tried booting into Windows 11 and doing the advanced start up and selecting change UEFI settings and still the same screen.

If I manually delete Pop!_OS from the drive via diskpart and remove its EFI directory then all is fine and the BIOS boots. It seems to be an issue with Pop's Systemd-boot bootloader and I can't for the life of me figure out a fix.

Any help would be extremely appreciated.

( edited the title to add the model name )

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Commodore_1995#

Have you tried to disconnect the ssd that has pop_os installed? Is sata mode set to ahci? Is secureboot disabled?

Mumma_hen

SATA was set to AHCI, secure boot disabled, fast boot disabled. Removing the drive does indeed fix the issue and so does deleting the pop OS EFI entry.

I have found a somewhat solution to the problem. Luckily Pop!_OS seems to create 2 EFI entries (at least in my case) one being named Pop!_OS [version name] and the other is the manufacturer name of the drive its installed on.

In efibootmgr I deleted the boot option ending with Systemx64 dubbed Pop!_OS 22.04. This enabled me to boot into the BIOS now and boot Pop via my Kingstone EFI entry.

However I am unsure just yet the long term impact this method will have on my system, will it prevent updates and upgrades? This is something I will have to monitor for a while.

billsey

Pop!_OS is notorious for screwing up booting from anything else.

Best to stay well away from it and use some better version of Linux instead.

Mumma_hen

billsey said:

Pop!_OS is notorious for screwing up booting from anything else. Best to stay well away from it and use some better version of Linux instead.

It's a real shame Pop requires so much hassle to boot on some systems, overall its a brilliant OS and one of my favourites so far, with Zorin being at the top. The only issue with Zorin is, it's not as updated as its other Ubuntu based cousins.

I have tried Arch based Linux distros and I really didn't like it compared to Ubuntu based ones and pop takes the crown. Hybrid graphics is really nifty.

I have managed to fix the boot issue as I said above but I'm unsure if the method I used may prevent future upgrades.

Do you have a Linux distro you recommend? I have tried Mint, Manjaro, Ubuntu, Zorin and Pop. I tried Debian but it wouldn't even boot, it just goes on a glitchy screen that resembles static on old CRT televisons

Commodore_1995#

Test with this command: systemctl reboot --firmware-setup

Mumma_hen

egydiocoelho said:

Test with this command: systemctl reboot --firmware-setup

I did try that with no success

Commodore_1995#

I will invite @JackE to join this thread.

Diogoss

@Mumma_hen how did you solve this problem? Apparently, if the pop_os was on an ssd just for it, and it doesn't have windows installed on any SSD that is present in the notebook, the bios should work.

Mumma_hen

I solved it in the end, although I decided to use mint and Pop_OS! NVIDIA drivers are out of date.

The key is within Pop or your linux flavour. Open the terminal and type

sudo efibootmgr

Find the entry for Pop_OS! (Version number) and then get its boot number and (as an example)

sudo efibootmgr -b 0002 -B

This will delete the Pop EFI entry causing the issues. THEN

Boot into BIOS, enable secure boot (temporarily) setup and secure boot password and then in the new options avaliable select

Add entry manually to UEFI (unsure of the name now)

Find your Pop_OS! Directory and add the bootloader off your choice (shim is best) and add and name it. Go back and remove the password for secure boot and disable secure boot and voila you have a functional EFI entry and it doesn't break your BIOS

deathstroke986

Thanks deleting the pop efi entry worked after I got into bios i installed another distro and just ditched pop os that I had installed

Diogoss

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1144859#Comment_1144859

Do you have a tutorial to add the Shim bootloader? I really want to install Arch Linux.

Mumma_hen

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1209084#Comment_1209084

I do not have a video tutorial I am afraid however I main Arch now and I can confirm that Arch works absolutly fine, if you use the archinstall script with the offical Arch ISO and select using GRUB then it works absolutly fine. I think systemd-boot works fine with Arch I can not remember, its only some distros that use systemd-boot that have this issue not all. Its a gamble. But I honestly just recommend using GRUB you will not notice a differance at all.

Diogoss

Soon I hope to try to install Arch with grub using archinstall. Very afraid, but in case it goes wrong I install Fedora or OpenSUSE which I know are signed.

Mumma_hen

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1209379#Comment_1209379

Make sure to disable secure boot for Arch, its not essential having secure boot so don't worry to much about it being off. Fedora is a good alternative as they use the latest NVIDIA drivers. Also make sure you use the standard proprietary NVIDIA drivers and not NVIDIA's new open kernel drivers as the open drivers have some featuted removed and have less gaming performance.

If you are nervous using archinstall try EndevourOS it is literally just Arch but with an easy to use installer and comes with extra repositories that make using Arch super easy.

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