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I've got an old desktop that I definitely have used in the past to run 6.0. I recall there was some HP USB tool to create a Bootable USB. I can't find that utility anymore - nowadays searching for HP USB tools gives plenty of results for unrelated stuff (well, useful for HP computer owners in sure, but not for me).

However, both prerelease and final release versions refuse to boot on my machine - my BIOS offers both UEFI and legacy boot options, but when I try it just gives me a "non system disk" error. I tried Ventoy, which starts up nicely, but it gives me the same error when I try to start the ISO image. Same for the new Bootable utility.

Any ideas on what to try? I might dismiss it as the computer just not being able to run it, but the fact that I have in the past and can't now just frustrates me.

Thanks!

So... I'm still curious about ideas what could be wrong, but I have found a workaround. As I mentioned it's an old computer. With a DVD burner that I haven't touched in about 10-15 years. And I have a stack of blank CDs that I haven't touched in the same time frame. And I have an ISO of Spinrite...

I Booted off the CD, worked perfectly. And now my 2TB drive is getting the TLC that I've not been giving it anywhere near often enough because of how long 6.0 took.

I can't believe how long I spent trying to figure out the USB approach... Although I guess since this is the only computer I've touched in so long that still has such drives. Apparently posting here jogged the right brain cells to awaken that memory...

Hi @cheshirex :

cheshirex said:

I tried Ventoy, which starts up nicely, but it gives me the same error when I try to start the ISO image.

Click to expand...

VenToy is definitely incompatible with SpinRite. I've researched this thoroughly since I wanted them to work together. But VenToy's A: drive emulation conflicts with SpinRite use of "flat real mode". What does work is a "super-set" tool known as “Easy2Boot” which you can find here: https://easy2boot.xyz/.

@cheshirex I think this is the HP tool you are referring to.

May at least be useful to see if MS DOS runs on there at least.

cheshirex said:

curious about ideas what could be wrong

Click to expand...

Make sure you have the very latest version of SpinRite. (i.e. go cleanup any old version(s) and download it again.) There was some issues with one of the recent versions that might have caused the problem you experienced. Please let us know here if you get the same problem with the current release #2.

EDIT: More info here: https://forums.grc.com/threads/6-1-hangs-on-dell-8300.1507/

Thanks for all the replies!

Steve, I've prepared an easyboot USB drive to try out when I get a chance, hopefully tonight. I'll note that you mentioned Ventoy on the podcast, and IIRC had said you were going to fix it so that it works with Spinrite with release 2. I didn't catch any further mention about it on the episodes since then -- might be worth at least bringing up that Ventoy doesn't play nicely with it, even with the update, just to be fully on record about it.

DarkwinX, thanks for the link. That does appear to be the right tool, but when I ran it under Windows 10, it refused to do anything with the USB drive I gave it. I think the last time I used it was back under Windows 7, so maybe something about the infrastructure changes caused it to no longer work for me. It's interesting but not critical enough to be worth chasing down, since I have an alternative for now.

PHolder, yup, I was using 6.1 release 2 at the time.

I could really use some help as I am LITERALLY at my wit's end trying to get 6.0 or 6.1 to run on my Toshiba Satellite P55W-C5316 laptop with Windows 10 (it "too old" to install Win11).

I have to shamefully admit that it's been years since I ran SR 6.0, but when I did, I had ZERO issues running 6.0 from DVD ISO image. Fast forward to 2024, and I can't get either 6.0 or 6.1R3 to run from either USB or DVD ISO. I ran the USB and ISO creator from SR.

I also ran InitDisk, Bootable, and ReadSpeed on the USB drive from my Microsoft Surface Pro 9 (Windows 11).

I updated the boot order on the Toshiba to have it boot from USB first before HDD () and disabled secured boot.

I even ran Rufus on the USB drive, but I am still striking out when it comes to get SR to run.

I like to think that I am technical enough to know better, but I am really stumped why I can't get SR to run from USB or ISO. I am sure that I am overlooking something stupid - what rocks am I missing in terms of overturning? I used to have older ISO images that have wondered off to parts unknown.

Steve, I can also go 1-on-1 with you if you want in order to cover particular details that you want to keep off of the forum. Thanks in advance for your patience!

@VBSailorGuy : Do you know whether that machine will boot from USB? I would imagine that it should. So the most straightforward way to get SpinRite running would be to have SpinRite under Windows to setup a USB drive for you. I don't think we've ever seen that fail. Your machine will need to have "Secure Boot" disabled and legacy boot support (BIOS support, sometimes known as CSM). Then during the boot process you'll need to hit a key to interrupt/intercept the normal boot from internal drive. And that should work.

You ought to be able to search for the key to hit to intercept the machine's normal boot.

@VBSailorGuy : Do you know if that laptop is booting in UEFI mode? If so, SpinRite 6.x cannot boot and run in that mode.

Please see this article for information on possibly booting that laptop in CSM mode :

VBSailorGuy said:

disabled secured boot.

Click to expand...

It appears all you may be missing is enabling the CSM. Various Google results seem to imply that *may* be possible. (Such as this one https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...m-on-new-toshiba-satellite-windows-8.1347987/ )

Steve, Dan, PHolder,

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!! Switching from UEFI to CSM was the last piece of the puzzle that I was missing. I would not have even thought of that one - at least, not right away! Somehow the UEFI/CSM tip did not come up initially in my Google searches. As I type this note, I am happily watching SpinRite run level 3 on the Toshiba.

I went back to the beginning by installing 6.1 on the USB from the menu without having to use InitDisk, Bootable, or ReadSpeed.

The top row of keys with the Escape key and all the function keys is kaput, which explains why I couldn't get the F2 and F12 keys on the Toshiba to interrupt the boot up process. I have a wireless keyboard that I was using with this laptop for a while, but I have no idea where I squirreled away the keyboard. (Don't worry - this Toshiba is a "hangar queen" that is no longer my main working machine.) Fortunately,the video at talked me through getting to the boot up menu by going under Settings.

In addition to disabling secure boot, I also disabled TPM - maybe that part is overkill?

After SpinRite is done tonight, I am going to use this machine to install a dual-boot Windows 10 with Manjaro Linux. Should I leave secure boot off until I am done installing Manjaro? Should I re-enable TPM before I install Manjaro?

I thought I had stumbled across the SR user guide somewhere, but now I can't find it. For us Windows users, it will be a big help to add in tips about disabling secure boot and switching from UEFI to CSM. I just happened to stumble across the disabling secure boot piece today, but I don't know how long it would have taken me to figure out the CSM trick (if at all!).

Thank you for saving my sanity!

You can mark this issue resolved!

@VBSailorGuy : Congratulations on getting that all resolved. To answer your questions:

1. You can re-enable TPM. The "Trusted Platform Module" is something that Windows desperately wants to have around and since you plan to dual boot Win10 & Linux you'll need TPM to keep Win10 happy.
2. My guess is that you can leave secure boot disabled and you may not have any choice in any dual-boot setup since Windows is jealous of any other OS being around.
3. And, yes... I first need to get GRC's eMail system up and running so that I can send v6.1 announcements to all v6.0 owners. Since that will be a slow process (so as not to appear to be spamming the world) while that's underway I'll be working on documentation which is currently completely missing. So the UEFI vs CSM issue will figure highly there.

Steve,

When I rebooted my Toshiba this morning, it won't boot from the HDD. Since my function keys are kaput, I had to use ctrl-[ to escape out of SpinRite. When I run dir on c:, I just see autoexec.bat, config.sys, edit.com, spinrite.exe, and the srlogs directory. Unless I can find where I stashed my wireless keyboard (or get a new one!), I have no way to select F2 (which the screen says to do), and I have no way to get back into the BIOS menu. Any ideas on how to boot from the HDD and get back into Win10? Fortunately, I've already ported off everything I need from this laptop.

... running level 2 to see if I can recover anything....

I think getting a keyboard (Finding your old one, or getting a new one) is your best bet. If you need to enable UEFI, Windows won't boot until you can do that, which requires the F2 key.

EDIT: I just remembered something. A laptop I have likes to default the F# keys to the media keys (prints with blue ink), so to use the F# keys in this state, I would need to hit FN+F# to use the F# keys. Anytime I do a firmware/BIOS update, I have to remember to reset it to default to F# and not the media stuff (I think it does a reset of the CMOS when I update the firmware).

VBSailorGuy said:

Any ideas on how to boot from the HDD and get back into Win10? Fortunately, I've already ported off everything I need from this laptop.

Click to expand...

If you remove the SpinRite USB drive the machine will likely revert to booting as it once did. But otherwise I agree with @miquelfire that having a working keyboard is just about as important as having a working power supply!

@Steve yeah, I had initially thought that the laptop would have booted back up just fine once I removed the USB drive (with the boot-up sequence being USB then HDD), which is why I wasn't initially concerned when I was running SR the other night. I have had success with other laptops booting up just fine with the boot order being USB first then HDD. I also didn't have to disable UEFI in order to get SR to run on those machines, which is why switching to CSM was a new trick for me (and, I maintain, not necessarily intuitively obvious to everyone ... although I am now that much smarter!). I think those other machines were Windows 7 and earlier - they were definitely not Windows 10 machines for sure. Alas, such was not meant to be for this machine!

Fortunately, my wife found a secretly stashed external keyboard that our child #2 never ended up using for an art project. I was able to use F2 to get into the BIOS menu, revert the boot order to HDD in first placed, and reenabled UEFI over CSM. The laptop still seems a bit sluggish, but at least it's back up and running. Now I am off to dual-boot install Manjiro - fingers crossed!

Thanks again for your patience and help!

miquelfire said:

I think getting a keyboard (Finding your old one, or getting a new one) is your best bet. If you need to enable UEFI, Windows won't boot until you can do that, which requires the F2 key.

EDIT: I just remembered something. A laptop I have likes to default the F# keys to the media keys (prints with blue ink), so to use the F# keys in this state, I would need to hit FN+F# to use the F# keys. Anytime I do a firmware/BIOS update, I have to remember to reset it to default to F# and not the media stuff (I think it does a reset of the CMOS when I update the firmware).

Click to expand...

@miquelfire, the problem with my Toshiba is that the whole row of function keys is dead as a door knob with no way (as far as I can tell) to work out around the issue (believe me - I tried!!). As soon as I plugged in the external keyboard approximately 15 minutes ago, F2 on the external board did the trick.

I have a Huawei Mate Pro X. In bios I only see Secure Boot (enabled). If I boot and press F12 I get a boot device menu, but the usb is not in the list of bootable devices. Does this mean I can not run spinrite on this machine?

timm said:

I only see Secure Boot (enabled)

Click to expand...

You would need to disable secure boot. (Caution if you use BitLocker [whole] disk encryption as disabling this can sometimes cause you to lose the keys, so make sure they're backed up first before you mess with the setting.)

If you disable secure boot, you may or may not see other options related to Legacy Booting and CSM. You would need to enable the CSM to enable legacy booting, if the device is capable. (My Google's on it seem to indicate it can do Legacy Booting, but I am not completely sure.)

timm said:

I have a Huawei Mate Pro X. In bios I only see Secure Boot (enabled). If I boot and press F12 I get a boot device menu, but the usb is not in the list of bootable devices. Does this mean I can not run spinrite on this machine?

Click to expand...

What does F2 do for you on your ProX? You should be able to edit the boot order and toggle Secure Boot with F2 instead of F12. https://consumer.huawei.com/en/support/content/en-us15883571/

Many BIOS setups allow you to boot legacy bios only on external media, to allow you to boot a legacy bios on the USB drive, so that is probably the only way forward. That should at least give you a freedos environment, with the internal drives now visible as enumerated by the bios.

While I am not a heavy-duty Windows person, I have a Dell Latitude 9510 laptop running Windows 11. I have tired and tired and tried and can't figure out how to make this thing boot from USB. I have "googled" until I am blue in the face. This computer is so slow booting and doing much of anything. I am suspicious that I have the same problem Steve's wife had with her EEG computer. I have had it with this Windoze computer. My 14-year-old Macbook Pro computer with an OS no longer supported works far better than this Dell laptop that is only a few years old. So, anyone with a clue on how to get this puppy to boot from a USB stick would appreciate it. I keep reading on the Google results that it's simple; I guess my brain does not work so well on simple these days.

markn455 said:

While I am not a heavy-duty Windows person, I have a Dell Latitude 9510 laptop running Windows 11. I have tired and tired and tried and can't figure out how to make this thing boot from USB. I have "googled" until I am blue in the face. This computer is so slow booting and doing much of anything. I am suspicious that I have the same problem Steve's wife had with her EEG computer. I have had it with this Windoze computer. My 14-year-old Macbook Pro computer with an OS no longer supported works far better than this Dell laptop that is only a few years old. So, anyone with a clue on how to get this puppy to boot from a USB stick would appreciate it. I keep reading on the Google results that it's simple; I guess my brain does not work so well on simple these days.

Click to expand...

I suppose you already found this document: https://www.dell.com/support/manual...c0315f-0cbf-461a-996f-54a98f99d05a&lang=en-us

Can you get to the boot menu following these instructions?

Restart the computer, with a bootable USB flash drive plugged in, and press F12 when the Dell logo appears to display the One Time Boot Menu. Using arrow keys, select USB Storage Device and press Enter.

If no USB option is present, arrow down to BIOS Setup (or something like that) and press Enter. Look thru the "BIOS" options to see if USB booting may need to be enabled.

Please see also this Forum article: https://forums.grc.com/threads/how-to-boot-and-run-spinrite-6-x-on-a-uefi-machine.968/

Since this LT is running Windows 11, it is booting in UEFI mode. UEFI boot and SpinRite 6.1 are incompatible. The article above "may" provide a way to change the boot mode to CSM if your LT supports that. If so, then booting off of a bootable USB flash drive with SpinRite on it will work.

Google does NOT seem clear on this CSM support.

himemsys said:

I suppose you already found this document: https://www.dell.com/support/manual...c0315f-0cbf-461a-996f-54a98f99d05a&lang=en-us

Can you get to the boot menu following these instructio

Click to expand...

Getting to the menu is challenging; sometimes, F12 works, and sometimes it does not. But with a little persistence, I can get to that menu. But once there, I can't find anything that talks about boot order or anything that changes manually booting from the USB stick. I have used Spinrite from a cmd box to create the bootable USB stick. It appears to have worked just fine. But until I can get this computer even to try, I will never know.

Once I finish this, I want to figure out how to make my wife's old 2009 iMac run Spinrite. I am sure her HD needs some attention.

DanR said:

Restart the computer, with a bootable USB flash drive plugged in, and press F12 when the Dell logo appears to display the One Time Boot Menu. Using arrow keys, select USB Storage Device and press Enter.

If no USB option is present, arrow down to BIOS Setup (or something like that) and press Enter. Look thru the "BIOS" options to see if USB booting may need to be enabled.

Please see also this Forum article: https://forums.grc.com/threads/how-to-boot-and-run-spinrite-6-x-on-a-uefi-machine.968/

Since this LT is running Windows 11, it is booting in UEFI mode. UEFI boot and SpinRite 6.1 are incompatible. The article above "may" provide a way to change the boot mode to CSM if your LT supports that. If so, then booting off of a bootable USB flash drive with SpinRite on it will work.

Google does NOT seem clear on this CSM support.

Click to expand...

Yes, this computer is using UEFI. I found nothing in the settings that talked about CSM that I could find poking around. I will check the forum article and see if anything helps enable CSM. Next step is my wife's 2009 iMac.

markn455 said:

es, this computer is using UEFI. I found nothing in the settings that talked about CSM that I could find poking around.

Click to expand...

Drat!

I forgot to mention, if a bootable SpinRite USB is plugged in when booting up in UEFI, it will NOT show up due to its incompatibility.

This could explain why you are not seeing a USB boot option.

I have had luck booting my USB SR flash drive by booting the laptop into Windows 11 (WIn 10 may be the same). Plug in the SR flashdrive then go into recovery options, advanced recovery options, then select 'use device'. For some reason this works on my Dell but trying to get it to see the flash drive prior to it doing a full boot (using F keys) it will not see the drive.

No idea what the difference is, but there is one. Hope that works!

@markn455, in addition to the F2 / F12 keys, you can also navigate to the boot menu by going into Settings > System > Recovery and then Advanced Startup (or you can watch this video ).

I had to dig around in the Toshiba boot menu in order to find the settings for the changing the boot order (USB/HDD) and toggling secure boot (UEFI / CSM). They were not in locations that were intuitively obvious. My initial experience mirror yours. I could not figure out how to get SR 6.0 or 6.1 to run even with USB supposedly booting first until this forum and @Steve tipped me off about the UEFI / CSM secure boot toggle issue. I have to admit that the secure boot trick was one that I eluded me... and would have continued to elude me if I didn't get a nudge in the right direction.

@Steve even after running 6.0 and 6.1 on my Toshiba, it is still woefully slow. I don't know if the partition size matters (see https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...ion-size/f30d36c0-32d7-4615-83dc-cf133b334e16). I am working on dual-boot installing Arch Linux Manjaro (I am thinking I will use KDE Plasma 5). I don't know why the Toshiba remains soooo slow....

Age maybe? I have a 2005 dell laptop with an 80 GB Toshiba HDD. SR 6.0 scan speed via the BIOS is only very, very slightly slower than SR 6.1 using it's native driver. The Intel drive controller and Toshiba drive combo in this 2005 LT is just slow.

DanR said:

Age maybe? I have a 2005 dell laptop with an 80 GB Toshiba HDD. SR 6.0 scan speed via the BIOS is only very, very slightly slower than SR 6.1 using it's native driver. The Intel drive controller and Toshiba drive combo in this 2005 LT is just slow.

Click to expand...

My Dell laptop from the early 2000s has a SATA2 drive, which is just slow compared to the SATA3 drives today. The laptop works fine once it's booted. Last night, it took about 3 hours to do a level 3 on the drive with 6.1. I don't recall how long 6.0 took, but it was at least an entire day. 6.1 is noticeably faster—fast enough for me to go back and run Spinrite on drives that I didn't have enough time to do.

VBSailorGuy said:

When I rebooted my Toshiba this morning, it won't boot from the HDD. Since my function keys are kaput, I had to use ctrl-[ to escape out of SpinRite.

Click to expand...

Do you know if it is the keyboard that is faulty? Have you checked the ribbon cable connecting it to the motherboard - that may be loose/ offset? Otherwise, a replacement keyboard is typically about GBP20.

AlanD said:

Do you know if it is the keyboard that is faulty? Have you checked the ribbon cable connecting it to the motherboard - that may be loose/ offset? Otherwise, a replacement keyboard is typically about GBP20.

Click to expand...

While I'm not going to crack the laptop open to check the connection (CMTCA - crisis management through crisis avoidance), I overcame the issue by using an unused spare external keyboard (cost - US$0) that I had forgotten we had. The issue is now OBE (overcome by events).

I ran SR 6.1 at both levels 2 and 3 without any subsequent perceptible changes in performance when I log into Windows 10.

The upside is that I was able to successfully dual-boot install Manjaro with KDE Plasma 5 on a new partition. Manjaro is running like a champ - Win10... eh.... still not so much! Windows 10 is still extremely sluggish.

One mystery that I am still researching is that in order to both run SR 6.0 and 6.1 as well as to install Manjaro, I had to disable Secure Boot. I kept the boot order as being USB then HDD, and I re-enabled TPM. Now if I re-enable Secure Boot, Toshiba presents the error message, “Boot failure: a proper digital signature was not found. One of the files on the selected boot device was rejected by the Secure Boot feature”.

Keep in mind that this error appeared after I installed Manjaro, so I suspect that the Toshiba does not like the partition with Manjaro.

Google Gemini suggested this path:
"Enabling Secure Boot with Manjaro (More complex):

"This method involves enrolling a key for Manjaro’s bootloader (shim) into your UEFI secure boot database. It’s a more complex process, but allows you to keep Secure Boot enabled for better security. However, it’s important to note that this is not officially supported by Manjaro."

The laptop is still usable as a dual-boot for Win 10 and Manjaro, but it is curious that Win 10 is so slow even after running SR 6.1 with no identifiable issues.

@Steve, I am now having issues getting SpinRite to run now that I dual-boot installed Manjaro Linux (with KDE Plasma 5) on the Toshiba with Windows 10.

Since the Satellite (P55W-C5316) has a Intel® Core™ i7-6500U Processor (https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...-6500u-processor-4m-cache-up-to-3-10-ghz.html), it is too old to boot to Windows 11.

Prior to creating the new partition and installing Manjaro, I was able to successfully run SR 6.1 at both Level 2 and Level 3.

Now, post-Manjaro installation, SR will not run when I boot up the laptop despite my previous success in doing so. The start-up boot order remains USB first then HDD. I have to keep "Secure Boot" disabled now in order for the laptop to boot up, otherwise I receive this error message: "Boot failure: a proper digital signature was not found. One of the files on the selected boot device was rejected by the Secure Boot feature". (It appears that Manjaro does not support Secure Boot, which means I have to keep Secure Boot disabled - is that statement correct?).

I unsuccessfully tried running SR with TPM enabled and disabled to no avail.

The laptop runs fine when I boot into Manjaro. It is still extremely sluggish beyond belief when I boot into Windows 10 even after running SR 6.1 last week at Level 2 and Level 3. SR 6.1 successfully completed the runs without identifying any issues.

What am I overlooking in order to run SR now in my "post-Manjaro installation and dual-boot with Win10" world?

Thanks in advance!

You would need secure boot disabled to boot SpinRite, so that's not your issue. You also need the CSM (compatibility support module) enabled, which you probably wouldn't need enabled for other OSes to boot. That should be all it takes to get SpinRite to boot, other than taking the step(s) to tell your PC to boot from the USB device.

@PHolder, thanks! I completely spaced out about switching from UEFI to CSM - I knew I was forgetting a step. Now that I switched to CSM, SR 6.1 is up and running. I just started my SOP (standard operating procedure) so I don't forget next time.

This nuance has me wondering. Once I am done with running SR 6.1, should I leave CSM enabled instead of switching back to UEFI? The only reason I ask is that now that I added a partition so I can dual-boot Win10 and Manjaro Linux, I have to leave Secure Boot disabled for the laptop to boot up. The laptop booted up just fine in Secure Boot when I just had Win10 and prior to the Manjaro installation.

@Steve, courtesy data point FWIW (for what it's worth), SR 6.1 estimates ~5 hours, 45 minutes to run at Level 3 on the 930-GB spinning hard drive (i.e., not a SSD), which I seem to remember as being close to what I saw last week.

Weirdly, I ran SR 6.1 at Level 3, and it looks like my partition with Manjaro Linux got wiped out and overwritten...? Strange. I am now reinstalling Manjaro on that partition

Did you restore your BIOS settings to how they were before you ran SpinRite?

ColbyBouma said:

Did you restore your BIOS settings to how they were before you ran SpinRite?

Click to expand...

Yes, I did. When I went to install Manjaro again, I could see that Manjaro was showing on the partition. After I ran SR 6.1 in Level 3, the Toshiba no longer shows the pop-up menu which allows me to select Manjaro or Windows. I am leaning towards reinstalling Manjaro.

When I was in the boot menu, I noticed that the BIOS enabled the Fn key by default. I changed the setting to standard F1-F12 keys because F2 was not working after I ran Level 3 yesterday. Now that I updated the BIOS setting, F2 is working again - I am glad that I checked! Strange...

The only reason I checked the F2 button is that I need it in order to change the BIOS from CSM back to UEFI, otherwise I will brick the machine if I run SR again. Until I re-enabled F2, I was only able to get into the BIOS settings by doing a soft reboot through the Windows Security settings. Now I am really leery about running SN again.

On the plus side, I just figured out that I can get back into the Manjaro partition as long as I enable the bootloader with the USB which holds the ISO plugged into the computer. The bootloader was launching from the HDD upon start-up prior to running Level 3 yesterday without having the ISO USB plugged in, so Level 3 changed something yesterday that I have yet to unravel.

ColbyBouma said:

Did you restore your BIOS settings to how they were before you ran SpinRite?

Click to expand...

@ColbyBouma : From what @VBSailorGuy has shared (see his most recent "clarification") it appears that he has quite a complex environment, not to mention an, as I understand it, barely functional keyboard. So I doubt that SpinRite has done anything untoward. He previously claimed that SpinRite had "wiped out his Manjaro partition" (which seemed unlikely at this point given the extensive testing that's been done) but after additional poking around he's figured out how to get back into it. So, I have no idea what's going on with his machine, but I'm glad he's having fun playing with it and with SpinRite!

@Steve, thank you for your patience and for humoring my troubleshooting efforts. My coding skills are very newbie-ish, so I am learning a few things the hard way along the way.

Google Gemini just saved the day!

For the last few days, I have learned a few things about the Manjaro bootloader, so I am now that much smarter.

After the second run at Level 3, I could only get into my Manjaro partition was when I left my USB with the Manjaro ISO inserted into the Toshiba. If I pulled out the ISO USB, then the Toshiba was going straight into Windows 10.

Now I can boot up from the HDD into Manjaro after I ran these commands in Konsole:

sudo su
sudo mkdir /mnt/boot

# Mount the EFI partition
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot

# Reinstall the bootloader
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/mnt/boot --bootloader-id=manjaro

# Update the GRUB configuration
update-grub

@Steve, thank you again for your hard work! I appreciate everything you have done on SR and with the Security Now! podcast.

@VBSailorGuy : I'm glad that you got it sorted out! Thanks for providing the closure for us!

@Steve , P.S. FWIW Part II just as an addendum in case anyone is interested (i.e., I will not be offended if no one cares!).

Yesterday, I re-installed a fresh copy of Windows 10. I was hesitant to go down that rabbit hole when the Toshiba was my primary working machine and I was concerned about inadvertently wiping out the content even though the data is backed up.

After uninstalling the bloatware from my usual login accounts, the Windows 10 partition definitely is a lot faster now. It is not 100% snappy, but it is definitely a lot more responsive than it was prior to the new installation of Windows 10. I didn’t even think of going down this rabbit hole until this weekend!

Much to my surprise and delight, the Windows 10 installation also left the dual-booting bootloader unchanged. One of the YouTube videos I watched last week mentioned that sometimes, Windows updates can sometimes inadvertently change the bootloader. When I boot up from the HDD, I still have the option to select between the Manjaro and Windows 10 partitions. Phew!

The Manjaro partition is pretty darn snappy!

I am now using both LibreOffice suite and Mozilla Thunderbird in both the Windows 10 and Manjaro partitions. I wish I had started using them a long time ago!

Anyways, I just figured you may (or may not?) appreciate knowing how my “science project” laptop is doing.

Now I am off to learning out to use Linux and Manjaro. I have a lot of Linux 101 to learn – all stuff that most greybeards will consider to be kindergarten-level table stakes knowledge.

Thank you for everything you are doing!!