this post was submitted on 22 Nov 2025
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This is a longshot but maybe someone would be able to help me with this. I have a laptop that only has a single NVMe drive. I booted it up today to find "Checking media presence......." after the splash screen and then it booted into BIOS. The BIOS doesn't see the NVMe device. I don't understand how this could've happened because I didn't update anything or change any setting or physically damage or jostle the laptop between the last successful boot and clean shutdown and now. When I boot into an EndevourOS liveusb, the installer can see my entire drive and its associated partitions. I can't access them though, I think because they're encrypted, but even so I feel like I should be able to see them in the filesystem, as I've rescued files like that before (from non-encypted drives). So I can't really make heads or tails of this. If the liveusb is seeing the drive and the correct partitions, it can't possibly be physical damage to the drive itself, right? Or any of the connections? Yet BIOS can't see it for some reason and won't boot into it. If it's worth anything, the OS on it is Arch with grub as the bootloader. Obviously I've tried to reseat the drive, move it to the other available slot, I've toggled on and off all sorts of settings in the bios, and nothing makes any progress. If anyone has any ideas, I'd be grateful. Thanks!

Editting to add: I'm not entirely sure the BIOS doesn't see the device. The menu is fairly unclear. There's a series of lines starting with "NVMe Device", which the corresponding entry is just blank. Then there's two lines of "NVMe Controller", one of which has an entry that I can't select or see more of that says "SAMSUNG (5...", which makes me wonder because my NVMe drive is 512gb, and I wonder if it's listed there? But I can't see anything beyond the elipses so I can't tell. Then the other controller line just says "Empty". Not sure what to make of that.

Second edit: There's a section in BIOS for RAID disks, and in it there's a listing for "Non-RAID Physical Disks" in which my NVMe drive is listed correctly. So maybe it's a bootloader thing? I'm so confused.

Final edit: Thank you so much for the help everyone, even though I'm sure my post was a confused mess. I luckily managed to back up all my files, so it's just a matter of fixing grub or reinstalling at this point. I hate computer :)

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[–] PorkrollPosadist@hexbear.net 4 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

The UEFI firmware stores a list of boot loaders in NVRAM (a dedicated chip on your motherboard) in what are called EFI Variables. Sometimes this gets fucked up if the drive numbering changes, like when a drive is added or removed (physically, or "effectively" due to power failure or some other freak incident), or if it is snowing outside, or if the machine is booted on Friday the 13th in an even numbered year. It sounds like rather than GRUB just disappearing, the EFI variable pointing to it has. You might just need to re-create this EFI variable. The tool for this is efibootmgr. Though it can be helpful, you don't actually need to do this from a chroot environment. You could do it from any rescue CD (if you need to re-install GRUB, then you should do it from a chroot though).

The UEFI firmware usually will make no attempt at auto-detecting bootloaders (with the possible exception of BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI). The OS installer creates an EFI variable at install-time, and if it becomes invalid for whatever reason it gets yeeted.

[–] Azarova@hexbear.net 1 points 45 seconds ago

It sounds like rather than GRUB just disappearing, the EFI variable pointing to it has.

ohnoes what the god damn fuck. holy shit i hate computers, i have never heard of this before. thank you so much for this, I will try messing around with this tomorrow and hopefully that rescues it. if not, i'll just bite the bullet of a reinstall, but thank you again for the glimmer of hope.

[–] dead@hexbear.net 5 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

Something like this? You mount the system from your liveusb, then you use "chroot" to load into the system, then you reinstall grub from the chroot. Please make sure you understand the commands and not just copy/paste.

https://github.com/Ryder-Blase/Fix-GRUB-Chroot

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Chroot

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GRUB

[–] Azarova@hexbear.net 2 points 5 hours ago

Thank you for the help. I'll try this later when I have more time. If it doesn't work out then I'll just say fuck it and blow the install away and put endeavour on it. I managed to save all my files, it'd just be a massive pain.

[–] stupid_asshole69@hexbear.net 4 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Your bios sees the nvme.

Checking media presence is many laptop models (reply with your model number) string to indicate it’s trying to boot from network.

Go to the boot order in your bios and remove network or “pxe” from it and make sure your nvme is at the top of the list.

Reply to this post when that either works or doesn’t.

[–] Azarova@hexbear.net 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Okay so I've done that a few times before and it didn't boot into the OS, but I'm now on the liveusb and I'm able to access the encrypted partition so I can pull all my files off onto an external drive. It must be a grub problem, so that's my next step. Thank you for the that info though, that seems(?) to rule out any physical issue thankfully.

[–] stupid_asshole69@hexbear.net 3 points 8 hours ago

Were you able to make sure the nvme is at the top of the boot order?

If you were and you need to repair grub, an arch (or really anything) usb key can fix grub as shown on the arch wiki using chroot to switch your root environment to the nvme and the grub- tools to configure and reinstall grub.

[–] hellinkilla@hexbear.net 3 points 8 hours ago

Idk but if it was me I'd clone the disk or backup whatever is important to you in case something is/becomes hosed.

[–] Meltyheartlove@hexbear.net 3 points 9 hours ago

is it still not appearing after decryption?

[–] musicpostingonly@hexbear.net 2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Is there a bios update available?

Arch

what got updated?

[–] Azarova@hexbear.net 2 points 8 hours ago

what got updated?

Nothing, I haven't updated in a couple of weeks because I've been pretty busy. Nothing should have changed between the last correct boot and today.

After some work, it turns out the NMVe drive is not the issue. It must the the bootloader or something because I was able to get into the drive on a liveusb and I'm currently rescuing my files from it onto an external drive. Unfortunately, I don't understand how to fix grub but I guess that's my next step.