Please Help install Solus on Legacy Bios MBR/DOS HDD
TraceyC
dear Tracey,
i tried to do another installion of Solus, and again it failed:
the installer finished without any errors, but on restart the system was not bootable.
i noticed that even i was fully on Manjaro MBR BIOS: the installation summary said that it is generating a new GPT PARTITION TABLE on the Master Boot Record.
So this must be wrong in the installer.
There was no option to choose otherwise.
here some screenshots: "Install Bootloader to BIOS MBR"
Summary says: "create a new GPT Partition Table"
Is there anything i can change during the installation process to get this done?
Maybe somewhere in a .conf-file of the installer?
if needed, i can also provide the inxi of the Manjaro-installation
Did you try the solution suggested by @blueicetwice , I have also used this marvellous utility to recover a newly installed system that would not boot and it worked very well.
I would also suggest a move over to ventoy USB disk imaging as that supports bios and uefi without reconfiguring. Also several ISOs can be written to the same stick without needing to rewrite the whole thing. Stick with it, Solus is worth the effort.
TraceyC
dear Tracey,
i just re-installed Manjaro again.
It uses the same Calamares installer as Solus.
Because Solus was installed falsely as GPT on the HDD one hour ago, the similiar Solus-installation-pic from before now said BIOS + GPT.
But even though the Manjaro-installer recognised it as GPT: the Manjaro-installer created a MSDOS - Partition Table on the Master Boot Record.
All this in the summary and during installation.
my laptop is now bootable with Manjaro and its Grub, and all works.
it seems the Manjaro-installer is more correct in choosing the format of the partition table (MSDOS or GPT), while the Solus-installer seems to always choose GPT.
...and i still have no idea how i could install Solus successfully.
BuzzPCSOS
deaar @Buzz and dear @blueicetwice,
i tried this Rescatux and i can NOT RECOMMEND it !!!
i am afraid it is even MALWARE!
i pressed the "restore grub" button. it did something. ended with an error.
afterwards i tried to boot with both Solus and Manjaro installation sticks: NO WIFI NETWORK BLUETOOTH possible anymore.
everything gone.
i had to dismantle my laptop and remove the BIOS battery for 20 minutes in order to get everything working again.
i dont know what this Rescatux did, but it seems to be evil!
i can only hope that i dont have any MALWARE on my Master Boot Record now, after using this.
- Edited
"deaar @Buzz and dear @blueicetwice,
i tried this Rescatux and i can NOT RECOMMEND it !!!
i am afraid it is even MALWARE!"
Nein, das ist nicht richtig !!! It is nicht Malware but rather Palware...
I have used if for at least ein decade. It even helf me in my first divorce. :-))
Your installation should be on the target drive, however, there will be no boot
order in the MBR. Try it again, BTO, and select another option, as the first may
not work. Rescatux, at times, needs a second try, in order to be successful.
The last time, it placed all the five OSs on the bootloader. It also changed one
of my three HDDs to a 
GPT partition. Yes, four Linux and MicroToylets.
A good read on GPT partitions.
BTO I am sorry to hear about your bad experience with rescatux, it is a respected tool that has been helping people with similar issues to yours for many years now. It is a shame that you did not persevere with it's features as there is a wizard feature that can attempt to diagnose the problem and rebuild grub from scratch.
While tinkering with old bios run PCs it is very easy to corrupt or delete the grub loader and Rescatux has always diagnosed and fixed my problem.
I do not understand how anything that happens on your hard drive can affect the behaviour of a live environment, a computer will happily boot into a live environment with no hard drive installed. The issue you have here is looking much more like hardware issues.
Try to select Manual partitioning -> New partition table -> Select MDR -> Create partition / (if you want /home separately) and continue accordingly installer commands. When it informs about GPT, click ok and next.
ermo
dear ermo,
thanks for your support!
why did i not follow your instructions?
someone in the Manjaro-Forum wrote that its not good to just erase the master boot record. there always should remain a partition table + bootloader to not damage the whole disk. so it is advised to better overwrite the contents with new info than delete them.
today 2 tries to install Solus, but again the Solus-installer always only created a GPT Partition Table on the Master Boot Record. I assume this is the reason why my laptop is unbootable from that.
re-installed Manjaro and the Manjaro-installer creates a MSDOS Partition Table on the Master Boot Record and MBR-bootloader. from there Manjaro boots into a GRUB without problem.
As the Solus installer only creates GPT partition table on my MBR master boot record, my conclusion was that it would have made no difference if i had followed your instructions to erase the master boot record or not, because the system ends up unbootable in any case, wheter i had erased the MBR before or not.
the Manjaro-installer delivers MSDOS partition table out of the box.
if you have any more ideas what i could try...
- Edited
BTO someone in the Manjaro-Forum wrote that its not good to just erase the master boot record. there always should remain a partition table + bootloader to not damage the whole disk
That is in the case that the user don't want to delete the mbr partition for "reuse" in later installations.
I recommend, if doing a clean install of solus, to not conserve any partitions and letting the installer to do what it needs to do, or for the advanced user, make manual partitioning.
Just take into account Manjaro is not Solus, Solus is independent and implements some things different compared to other distros; one example is that solus uses clr-boot-manager to manage boot in uefi or bios environments and not directly in to grub.
- Edited
I have pondered this I believe I would do what Ermo asked alot of stuff can hide in a MBR and if you
wipe it there is no reference to manjaro or anything and no MBR at all.(So solus will install a fresh Boot)
I had to do this years ago wipe a disk to correct things. (More than once)
Also on a note from what Nolan mentioned it appears your laptop will do eufi from what I can tell to.
Either of these two things I would think would get Solus going.
Note: Rescatux has been around long long time even used it back in the day and prob if it had issues correcting
things I would do above mentioned.
And when you say Solus wont boot is there anything on the screen?
Maybe your USB drive has a corrupt installation. As advised above, try Ventoy.
Solus-installer always only created a GPT Partition Table on the Master Boot Record. I assume this is the reason why my laptop is unbootable from that."
BTO, my rig remodeled in 2011, it did the same thing, placing a GPT on one of the HDD. The MBR, is out-of-order and needs to be repaired. Reinstalling Solus, will not solve this issue, IMHO.
PLEAZE READ DAS: https://www.minitool.com/lib/gpt.html
- Edited
blueicetwice
in that case, it's interesting 
EDIT:
GPT partition table is for UEFI systems
MSDOS partition table is for legacy BIOS, GPT won't work here rendering the ssd/hdd un-bootable as a direct consequence.
Let's check the so messages to efi and gpt. Look at this.
- Edited
pomon, excellent guide indeed.
This command will indict weather one is using a legacy or UEFI boot.
ls -d /sys/firmware/efi
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2826910/goodbye-bios--hello-uefi.html
If one's rig is 2012 or newer, then it is loaded with UEFI.
Once again, Mr Softie, was conspiring to retard the use of Linux. Where are the class action
lawyers ???? The COE at the time was the epic failure, Steveo Ballard. <----- the ninth richest
American and owner of the L.A. Clippers
PLEASE do NOT highjack/spam my request !!!
PLEASE: it is NOT a question of wheter i have UEFI or BIOS !
i AM definitley on BIOS on this machine.
and i have an even older laptop that ONLY has BIOS too.
and i want to keep them aline.
but if i can not get it to work here, then it does not work on the older one too !!!
blueicetwice This command will indict weather one is using a legacy or UEFI boot.
I think you might have meant that it will indicate whether ... legacy or UEFI.
That doesn't seem to be something that's worth an indictment, whatever the result of the test.
