Member Avatar for lewashby

Today I just put a new SSD in my desktop. I did have a little trouble booting up the OS because I had plugged the DVI into the wrong port, when I couldn't see the monitor I did end up turning off the computer several times before I finally found the problem. I don't know if the problem occured when I was physicaly in the box or during boot when I turned it back off several times but now my system will not boot. The grub screen does display but after selecting the Linux Mint option it goes to a screen that says ->

Welcome to emergency mode! After loggin in, type "journalct1 -xb" to view system logs, "systemct1 reboot" to reboot, "systemct1 default" or ^D to try agin to boot into default mode. Give root password for maintenance (or press Control-D to continue):

I think I have blown up my MBR or GRUB. I have validated that my boot drive is /dev/sda1.
Any ideas on how I can go about fixing this issue. I do have a live USB that I can boot into and make repairs. Thanks.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Gribouillis

Dani AI

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Short diagnosis and a practical path forward.

Because the GRUB menu still appears but selecting Mint lands in systemd “emergency” mode, the bootloader itself is probably intact and the problem is more likely a damaged or unmountable root filesystem, a bad /etc/fstab entry (wrong UUID), or a missing/incorrect initramfs. Sudden power-offs during disk activity (as described) commonly leave ext filesystems flagged dirty or change device ordering after adding an SSD. ’s prompt about running fsck is therefore exactly the right first check; ’s Boot-Repair suggestion is a handy shortcut if manual repair is not wanted.

A concise diagnostic sequence from a live USB (identify, check, inspect):

sudo lsblk -f            # see partitions, types, UUIDs
sudo mount /dev/sdaX /mnt
sudo nano /mnt/etc/fstab # verify UUIDs and remove any bad mounts
sudo umount /mnt
sudo fsck -fy /dev/sdaX  # run on each Linux partition that looks dirty

If UUIDs in fstab don’t match the output of lsblk -f (common after adding/swapping drives), fix the entries or replace them with labels.

If filesystems and fstab look correct but boot still fails, reinstall GRUB from a chroot. For a legacy/MBR system the common sequence is:

sudo mount /dev/sdaX /mnt
sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
sudo mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
sudo mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys
sudo chroot /mnt
grub-install /dev/sda
update-grub
exit

For UEFI installs, mount the EFI system partition on /boot/efi before running grub-install with the appropriate EFI target. Important: run repairs in the same firmware mode (UEFI vs BIOS) the system was installed under, and target the whole disk (e.g., /dev/sda), not a partition.

Boot-Repair (as suggested) automates many of these steps; prefer a USB image and boot it in the same mode as the installed system. The Windows 8 warning on some pages is about UEFI/Secure Boot/boot-mode quirks — a USB prepared for UEFI boot usually works better than a CD on modern machines. If problems persist after fsck and GRUB reinstall, collect the installed-system logs (systemd journal) and report the specific error lines for a targeted follow-up.

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Member Avatar for Gribouillis

Did you try the boot repair disk ?

Member Avatar for Gribouillis

Yes this one. It usually works very well to detect installed OSes and repair the boot.

Member Avatar for lewashby

Thanks, I'm going to try the boot-repair thing out. Why does the the #2 direction say -> (do not burn it on CD/DVD if your PC came with Windows8)?

Since my Linux Mint is down I'm having to do all this from Windows 8.

Member Avatar for rproffitt

I can't answer why the W8 note. Might be some UEFI not handled issue. Why not put it on USB?

Member Avatar for Stefce

Did you tried to turn it off and back on?

Edited by Stefce
Member Avatar for lewashby

Stefna_1, first thing, 500 times.

Member Avatar for Gribouillis

I don't know why the #2 direction is here. I never had a failure using the boot-repair-disk from a CD/DVD. So you can try it if you prefer this. But why not use the USB stick method?

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