Here's my system:
- Dell Latitude e6410 laptop
- Dual boot: Win 7 & Debian 10
Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sda1 * 2048 206847 204800 100M 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 206848 251139759 250932912 119.7G 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 251140094 312580095 61440002 29.3G 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 251140096 304476159 53336064 25.4G 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 304478208 312580095 8101888 3.9G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
Here's what I experience:
First, I should say that this laptop is not my "daily driver"; I use Debian to explore ardiuno projects & learn about linux , RPi etc. & basically expand my horizons (many years ago I worked with a unix-based software healthcare informatics company but was never a unix guru). I use Win 7 to interface with my laser engraving hardware. For years when I powered on the laptop I would see the expected text menu allowing me to select between starting Debian or Win 7. Most of the time the laptop is simply turned off.
Now, when I turn on the laptop I briefly see a the top left of the screen "Welcome to Grub", but within 1/2 a second the screen is filled with random horizontal lines that seem to scroll and no legible print. I know that in the background the menu items still exist because I can use the [Down] arrow to move to the bottom of the list where the Windows 7 selection is located and Win 7 will boot. Alternatively, if I leave the menu selection at the default (top) selection, Debian boots after the timeout.
I have been reading/searching to see if others have encountered this, but haven't come across any exactly similar experience. I've also been reading https://wiki.debian.org/GrubEFIReinstall. The trouble is that when I check
[ -d /sys/firmware/efi ] && echo "EFI boot on HDD" || echo "Legacy boot on HDD"
the response is "Legacy boot on HDD" and the article does not lead to any solutions if that is the case.
Furthermore, I seem to have come to understand that original grub (grub 1?) used a file called "menu.lst" but with grub 2 that file is deprecated in favor of "grub.cfg". There is no instance of a "menu.lst" file that I can find on my system, but there is a "grub.cfg" file.
Thanks for any help / direction to restore the bootloader w/o requiring a reinstall of Debian.