grub rescue [Solved]

[whbr]

I was trying to install MX-23.6 on a Dell Inspiron 15 using a live usb I had made earlier on that computer. The live CD booted as expected and everything seemed correct so I went to install only the root preserving /home. I think I made a bad choice when it came to installing grub. I know I did change settings from the default recommendations. I got a msg that 'something was missing' and 'did I want to proceed?' I'd seen this message on this machine in the past (I'd used this machine since probably MX-16) so I did what fools do and powered past it. When I went to boot from the hard drive I got a msg that grub had issues and to reboot from the live usb and select the grub repair option. This I did but when I selected repair grub from the menu it didn't work. At some point in loading grub I got the msg

Welcome to GRUB!
error: file '/boot/grub/x86_64-efi/normal.mod' not found.
grub rescue>

I fooled around using some commands like ls to list the partitions. Found the root partition and can list the files in /root. But many of the cmds suggested on internet sites return 'unknown command', so currently I'm kind of stuck there.

Here's perhaps a bigger problem: The bios should still be set to boot from the usb first but doesn't and I can't even access the bios in the normal way (F2 on power up) to check on or change any settings. When the machine powers up the splash screen displays it goes right to grub rescue>. Is it time to recycle this computer? Thanks, Mark

[whbr]

Was able to determine that if I bang on F2 repeatedly the machine will enter bios update. Oddly the bios menu that came up was different from the one I'd used earlier to enable boot from usb but I was able to select an option to do so and was able to get the live usb to boot. Now I'm at the stage during installation where the warning I'd ignored earlier is back.

"The following drives are or will be set up GPT but do not have a BIOS-GRUB partition: sda, etc"

I don't quite understand this but on the choose partitions screen the options are:

Device Size Use For label Format
sda 238.5GB GPT
sda1 500MB drop down blank ESP FAT32
(options available: FORMAT ESP /boot)
sda 3 9.8GB swapMX ext4
sda2 29.4GB drop down '/' rootMX23 ext4
sda7 65.4GB drop down blank homeMX ext4
sda10 117.2GB drop daown blank DATA ext4

And there are some additional windows related partitions.

Typically I reinstall the /home partition but this time would rather not (although everything is full backed up so it wouldn't be to big of a problem if I had to.)

Thanks for your consideration, Mark

[fehlix]

seem you have booted up from the DVD and installed with MBR/CMS/legacy BIOS boot mode. So the installed system may missong the EFI-grub loader.
Suggest to boot again from LiveBoot medium within UEFI boot mode (not legacy BIOS boot mode) and reinstall GRUB into the ESP with help of MX Boot Repair.

[whbr]

fehlix - thanks that did the trick. the grub repair on the mepis tools sent me to the bios set up where I discovered that an option to also allow legacy booting (in addition to the uefi) so I unchecked that and was able to set up the partitions in a manner that worked. The Tools that the newer versions of MX have are really amazing. Well done all