eOS community. I was very excited to try Elementary OS on a Dell Inspiron 3452 laptop; however, when I try to boot into the new OS, the computer can't find it. The machine has a 32GB emmc that I had previously succeeded in installing and running Lubuntu on. I have tried installing eOS with both UEFI on and UEFI off (legacy mode). In either configuration, after the initial installation (which seems to go well) the machine will not boot and reports an error of no operating system found. Since eOS and Lubuntu are both based on the same Linux architecture, I feel like I should be able to run eOS. Any help would be greatly appreciated. TIA.
1 Answer
I have had a few Inspiron machines in the past, and my primary machine is an Inspiron as well, so I'll provide some details that have matched my experiences in getting these things set up. Typically, there are three major things to consider...
Ensure that the eMMC is unmounted when you boot into the live USB. To do this, you can use the "Try elementary" option in the initial GUI prompt and then open GParted, and unmount any partitions on the eMMC that are mounted. eMMC disks are seen as SD cards in many cases, especially with consumer hardware like Inspirons, and thus get automounted as removable media.
You may need to manually add the boot option from within the Dell UEFI menu. You can likely do this by entering the UEFI/BIOS settings, navigating to the boot tab/menu, and then manually adding or reordering options. This may mean navigating the filesystem from within the UEFI, but usually it doesn't go that far.
There are certain toggles in the UEFI that can cause some struggles. In some cases, the "TPM" option, which is short for "Trusted Platform Module", can cause images to be unbootable. If the first and second options don't result in a fix, try toggling this function. Two of my inspirons in the past have required me to do this.
