Ran a new Toshiba C55-A5245 notebook on openSuse 13.1 and Win7 dual boot, in openSuse for weeks. Shut down a day. On powering up, the screen halted with “GRUB” in the UL corner. Got into BIOS and changed to quick boot–mistake. Machine after power cycle or D-A-D reboot remained blank, not even a Tosh logo or GRUB. The “hold ESC for 3 second” trick (immediately after bootup) recommended by Toshiba did not get to the BIOS config, nor did holding F2. Found a posting on a Toshiba forum that said to disconnect any external peripherals, remove the battery and line power, then hold down the power button for 1 minute. That revived the screen and allowed the machine to boot–once. Tried all the various methods to reach BIOS config, all failed. Had to remove the battery each time to get any visibility on the screen for the next attempt. Fortunately the BIOS was set to boot first from the CD/DVD drive which allowed a new install of 13.1 from DVD. On the first reboot, Win7 showed up in two partitions :-o
Seems to be OK now. On to the online updates…
Wrote too soon. 13.1 installed, rebooted the first time (without the DVD in the drive). After the online update there were about 6 items that required a reboot, so I restarted it. Again the Toshiba notebook refused to boot. Took out the battery, pressed “ON” for a minute, reassembled, and it then again hung with “GRUB” in the UL corner. Power cycle leads to a blank screen, no boot.
Suggestions solicited.
Is this a EFI machine? Did you install as EFI or MBR ??
If you installed GRUB to the root partition, and not to the MBR, then load a partitioner and make sure your root partition is set as the boot partition.
This is not an EFI machine, AFAIK; came with Win7 and in BIOS I saw it was configured for a traditional OS.
During installs on this and other machines I have disabled MBR and enabled boot from the root ("/") directory (a 20 GB ext4 partition mounted at /). This has worked on many previous computers and versions of openSuse. Is there another step to make a machine boot via grub?
fwiw:: an update was tried on an hp-625 laptop on saturday with the same result described :: fastest recovery was a re-install via DVD with the same result on the final update :: after another re-install via DVD, the openSUSE13.1 oss and non-oss update repos were disabled, the re-install was ok :: other anomalies noticed, - no wireless interface - message while booting ‘allhwsupport=0 try b43.allhwsupport=1’ (although this message present on the successful re-install) this morning no problems was found updating on an hp-g7-2268 laptop :: assumption: the openSUSE13 oss update repo was in transition, hence a crooked update :: keep smiling
reprint
fwiw
an update was tried on an hp-625 laptop on Saturday with the same result described
fastest recovery was a re-install via DVD with the same result
on the final update, after another re-install via DVD,
the openSUSE13.1 oss and non-oss update repos were disabled,
the re-install was ok
other anomalies noticed,
- no wireless interface after some updates this week-end
- message while booting ‘allhwsupport=0 try b43.allhwsupport=1’
(although this message was still present on the last successful re-install)
this morning no problems was found updating on an hp-g7-2268 laptop
assumption: the openSUSE13 oss update repo was in transition,
hence a crooked update
keep smiling
ps: laptop does not allow WUSIWYG
Hi,
Took it back to the computer store. They identified the motherboard as bad, will replace it under warranty. Sorry for the distraction.
On 2014-03-24 18:36, konsultor wrote:
>
> Hi,
> Took it back to the computer store. They identified the motherboard as
> bad, will replace it under warranty. Sorry for the distraction.
No, it always helps to learn what the cause was. Maybe someone in the
future googles for a similar problem and finds this, so it saves him
time 
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 13.1 x86_64 “Bottle” at Telcontar)