not boot at all

[Rita G.]

Debian 10 cinnamon

After powering on computer, debian will not boot at all. The only text I get is:

“Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key_”

Can someone please help me fix this?

[Bulkley]

Does it get to the Grub boot menu? If it doesn't you might have an hardware issue such as a harddrive that isn't working. I'd stick in a live-CD or live-USB of just about any OS and see if it boots.

Give us more details. When you push the power on button do you get the usual noises, etc?

[arochester]

Is it set in the BIOS to boot from the HDD first?

[Rita G.]

After putzing around a while, I am able to boot the drive with the help of the “super grub2 disk” but I don’t know how to fix the problem.
If I remove the “super grub2 disk”, It will not boot; no grub menu; just the
“Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key_”
text.

[Bulkley]

It looks like your Grub is messed up. Unfortunately, it has been a long time since I used that super grub2 disk you mentioned so I can't give you expert advice. I'm sure there are instructions. Try these: Wizard – Restore Grub with Super Grub2 Disk. Before doing anything, read these instructions all the way through so you know what to expect.

[cuckooflew]

Need better details, maybe :
https://wiki.debian.org/systemd

With systemd console(tty1) is handled differently and if you used to check it to see how did your boot go now you'll see only couple of non-informative lines.

To be able to get full transcript of the system boot on your console you need to perform two steps.

1. Add to the kernel options systemd.show_status=1, for example via /etc/default/grub: ----snip---

There is some code, and more instructions, so read it all, get some better details, and then you will get better help.

From: https://www.tecmint.com/find-and-fix-linux-boot-issues/How to Find Out Linux Boot Issues or Error Messages

As we mentioned before, the Linux boot processes happens rapidly that we can’t even clearly read most of the output sent to the console.

So taking note of boot issues/errors calls for a system administrator to look into certain important files in conjunction with particular commands. And these include:

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/var/log/boot.log – Logs System Boot Messages 

----snip----

Again, you need to read it all, yourself, there are to many details to post the pages here.

[p.H]

Is the Debian system set up for EFI/UEFI or BIOS/legacy boot ?
If you don't know, once booted, check the contents of /boot/grub in the root filesystem (or /grub in the /boot filesystem if separate).
- if x86_64-efi or ia32-efi is present = EFI boot setup
- if i386-pc is present = BIOS boot setup

If setup for EFI boot, check the EFI boot variables with

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efibootmgr -v

Check that the EFI system partition is mounted on /boot/efi and check the contents of /boot/efi/EFI/debian. Files such as shim*.efi and grub*.efi should be present.
If a "debian" EFI boot variable does not show or files are missing in the EFI partition, reinstall GRUB with

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grub-install --force-extra-removable

(the option should allow to boot even without an EFI boot variable)

If setup for BIOS boot, check that the boot flag is set on a partition in the boot disk MBR, some firmwares require it.

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fdisk -l -t dos