Mate does not boot

[Pablo_Rey]

I gave a laptop to my nephew, it's a generic one... it had a secure uefi, that i managed to break (i don't remember how) but i managed to install the las long term support of ubuntu mate, i guess 18.04.

i don't know if the system is up to date. But we had a chat with him couple of days ago (pandemic homework... he needed an old relative...)

AFAIK today the laptop didn't boot... i believe itis stucks in bash... but i do not know what it means..

The fact is that I used lubuntu 14.04 and mx15... and as you can infer not only i'm not an expert, my linux knowledge is limited and rusted (waiting to 20.04, as w10 gets me nuts).

i told him that the worst case scenry they should download a distro, save the relevant documents, and install that new distro.

but just there in no linux's savvy people around, and given the crappy internet connection they have i really really really wonder if the are easier solutions.

this is an image of what they get when they turn on the laptop

noboot|690x388

and i am the only help my nephew can get, sadly!

[Tim]

Hi Paolo,
Shell appears when there's an OS or Grub menu corruption at boot, or also when deleting boot partition or files inside, or changing boot settings.
Perhaps if he didn't do "anything" rare, try to disconnect external drives like USB or external disks. Boot pressing F12 (or F2) and enter to a BIOS menu. Configure it to boot in UEFI/not secure boot mode (not legacy mode), and select to start from disk.

That's the first, but probably not the solution. Downloading Ubuntu iso, flash an usb to install Ubuntu, enter in live "try Ubuntu" mode, save important personal files to a external drive and reinstall Ubuntu would be definitive.