Can't install, google not helping.
I click install and immediately get the error message "error wiping old signatures from (drive name) Failed to probe the device"
137 Replies
I would, if my problem had been solved...
My problem has, unfortunately, not bee sloved
Did you
Like
Flash the os to the drive?
Yes lol
How else would I have got to that point?
Ay, I'd be happy to hear this is down to some laughable stupidity on my part tbh. Lay it on me.
i would run a smartcheck on the device when it fails to probe it
on windows you can use crystaldiskinfo
on linux you can use the partition manager of your choice as they offer smart check functionality
The device being the flash drive or the laptop?
Thanks for your help, I'm not very good with computers.
Gotta be honest, I'm not sure what I'm looking at here 😅
whichever you try to click install on (im assuming the disk drive of the laptop)
on crystaldisk mark to boil it down without being technical
green = good
anything else (yellow, orange, red) = you should consider backing up data and replace the disk
"Health status good 99%"
I'll see if I can get a screenshot. The laptop's on the verge on being so slow it's unusable. Really needs a linux OS on it
then it should be good
no idea why it failed to probe the disk then 🤔
Ah bugger. Ok thanks for trying. It just bluescreened lmao
what was the bluescreen error? might be some other hardware issue
https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/blue_screen_view.html#DownloadLinks
you can use this to fetch the info again
NirSoft
Blue screen of death (STOP error) information in dump files.
Displays information about blue screen crashes occured on your system. (MiniDump Reader)
It's refusing to boot into windows now
im just going to go on a whim and say your laptop might have bigger issues then 😅
bazzite installer didnt even get to do anything so it havent touched the disk since it failed to probe it.
Yeeeeaaah. I don't know what the problem could be. I'm seeing a boot menu
And it's saying "media test failure, check cable. Exiting intel boot agent" and then going back to the boot menu
means it couldnt read the disk (or find the boorloader on the disk) and tried to do network booting
I have no idea why that would happen. It's now given me the same error message again, but is booting into windows
All I did was turn it off, open the SSD flap and blink at it in confusion, close it again and turn it back on lol
ok maybe it tries network booting first? cant tell since i dont know the boot order in your bios
I think it goes USB, hard drive, other things after that
if you can grab the bluescreen info i can at least see if it was caused by hardware failure or not hopefully
Ok I'll download that utility you suggested in 11 years when windows finishes booting
Very much appreciate the help, btw
i dont use windows myself so my help will be very limited
but i know how to read bluescreen info for whatever reason
I really, really want to be rid of windows. It's still loading
something is clearly wrong
I bought a ruggedised laptop second hand. So it's slow and bad, but at least it was incredibly expensive.
since this is an ssd and they should not be this slow
Yeah it's a 1TB SSD
Ok it's nearly started
Ok I'm just sending a screenshot of the results via email to myself
ok
Just gotta wait for the RIGHT CLICK MENU to load...
something is clearly severely wrong with the system, cant say what though since it could be the ssd, or it could be the connector or anything inbetween the ssd and the cpu
Hmm so linux might not even fix the problem?
so a critical process died
usually that can be
* corrupted system files
* bad sectors on the disk (which leads to corrupted system files)
can you fire up crystaldiskinfo again
might be worth a 2nd look
primarily looking for anything related to sectors
Absolutely
or anything that looks like it would stand out
since ssds can have completely different entries
you look for something similar to this
Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0
grabbed that line from one of my own ssds
or uncorrectable error count or similar
the raw values for those should be 0x0000 or essentially you want it to be 0s after the xStop code: critical process died
another blue screen
yeah same one
Yeah
maybe it would be worth getting an ubuntu iso usb and just do the smart scan from that 🤔
remove windows from the equation
I'd love to
No idea how, but sounds like a great idea
https://ubuntu.com/download/desktop
flash that to an usb and choose to try it when it boots
then press the windows key on the keyboard
open
Disks and well while i wait for you to get to that part i will fire it up on a virtual machine and take some pictures for youonce you have the Disks application open, click your ssd then click the 3 dot menu and select SMART data and self tests
i cant click on it because virtual machine
Thanks very much, I'm downloading it now
if it fails at probing the disk again, something is either wrong with the disk or the laptop as it fails to communicate properly with the disk
and without a spare disk you cant check which it is 🙃
Hmm. Ok, thanks. I'll let you know when itr's downloaded
good luck
just send a screenshot of the smart data and i can look at it when i get back
Okie dokie
Ubuntu is working very snappily
Here's the results. If I can get ubunti working on here and it works well, I don't see why Bazzite is having problems
Disk should be fine based on that
You can try install bazzite again if you want
Sick, I'll flash it to the drive again
if it still doesnt work then you can try ubuntu or pop os instead (or install fedora kinoite and rebase to bazzite)
wait just got on my pc
might be some issues with it
but the assessment is ok so idk, seems weird that having almost 9000 uncorrectable ecc counts would be ok
the machine has 2 disks?
What does that mean?
I only got the option to check 1 disk
huh
odd that it shows up as sdb then
which usually would be the 2nd sata disk
I think it may have swappable disks. It's a Getac B300
There's a flap you can open and pull the SSD out of
What does 9000 uncorrectable ecc counts mean? Are they corrupted sectors on the disk?
it refers to the number of times a data transfer within a drive had an error that could not be corrected by the ECC algorithm.
A non-zero value for the uncorrectable ECC count is not ideal, but it does not necessarily indicate imminent failure. It could be due to a single error in a frequently accessed sector or multiple errors in different sectors.
based on what i found online about that specific attribute
it could be as simple as data transfers being interrupted by a pc crash, those will create errors like that so its not marked ad serious by itself, its one of the attributes you need to manually assess if its bad or not
i will say if you install a different OS than windows and it ends up running into booting like a slug, something might be bad with the ssd itself (but we wont know for 100% sure before trying a spare drive)
It booted into ubuntu pretty quickly and ran a thousand times better than it did on windows
It was night and day
that booted from the usb not the ssd😛
Aaaah I see
Bugger lol I hoped that'd fix things
Ok fedora's finished flashing bazzite onto the drive
well you have something to try if it keeps happening on a different OS
Putting it in now
not much i can do but guess and suggest based on experience
so if it keeps happening, cheapest check is a spare disk, if it keeps happening on that then its an issue on the laptop itself
Well, you've helped immensely so far
I don't have a spare disk, unfortunately. I am willing to get a new one though, if I need to
lets see if its any difference with a non windows system on it
Test this media and install bazzite? Or just install it?
just install
the test fails often and is very picky
Ok fair
if you stare at it wrong it will fail 🤣
Yeah, I think I saw exactly one other person having the same issue as me online lol
Free up space by removing or shrinking existing partitions?
are you going to keep windows?
Nooooo lol
Would rather keep a knife in my face
then you can remove everything and install, but i would maybe keep an ubuntu or pop os usb on the side just incase the ssd shits the bed since your pc has been weird 🙂
but thats me
it will remove all files on the ssd when you remove everything though
Okie dokie, so free up space? This is where it failed before, btw
yes if youre ok with losing the files on the disk
"You r current bazzite software selection requires 14.6GiB of available space... The disks you've selected have the following amounts of free space: 3.58MiB free space available to use. 559.31MiB free space unavailable but claimable from existing partitions. You don't have enough free space to install bazzite. You can shrink or remove existing partitions via our guided reclaim space tool, or you can adjust your partitions on your own in the custom partitioning interface"
1tb SSD and 1TB USB stick
there wasnt an option to overwrite everything?
Storage configuration automatic, custom, advanced custom
Gree up space by removing or shrinking existing existing partitions
Those are the only options that don't concern adding more disks
think if you go to automatic you can get the choice to free up space.
Ok I'm in the reclaiom interface
reclaim all
Including the one that says "System_Reserved"?
yes
it will remove windows completely
OkOk that happened quicker than I expected
yeah it just marks the space as available
doesnt delete anything until you start writing to the disk
Begin installation? I've created the user and password
Just gonna put in my wifi password
do that
then begin installation and hope your disk gets probed
😛
once it starts i have to run again
I just nearly sent you my wifi password 🥲
I've typed it into the wrong box before but never the wrong machine lmao
i cant do anything with it here in norway anyway, remind me next time i fly by your house :clueless:
wherever that is
Gah
Failed to probe again
damn
"error wiping old signatures from /dev/sda1:Failed to probe the device /dev/sda1"
you didnt have 2 disks show up in the automatic interface right?
since you said your usb was 1tb also
No, just the one
ok
then idk
you can try ubuntu or pop os (personally i am a bit fond of pop)
however pop is running fairly old software atm but they are slated to update to a new base sometime in or after april
and if they fail to install then i would try with a different disk
also since you said your usb is 1tb
Ventoy
Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO files. With ventoy, you don't need to format the disk again and again, you just need to copy the iso file to the USB drive and boot it.
try format it with this
I think I got a pop iso on my main pc, I'll try that
lets you just drop the iso files on it and select which to boot
I'll give it a go, thanks
meaning you can keep the bazzite iso and ubuntu or pop iso on it to easily try without reflashing all the time
i gotta run again, sorry that we didnt really get further
but i am leaning heavily against hardware issue atm since it failed 2 times plus that bsod with super slow boot
Ah it's ok. I'm determined to get this thing working. Thanks again for your help
np
Same problem with Pop
Yeah I'm leaning hardware issue then. Can't guarantee it's the SSD itself though or the actual SATA connection for the laptop being the issue (but we are hoping it's just the SSD since that is a much cheaper fix)
As the other "fix" is a new motherboard or laptop alltogether...
Ah christ. Uuuh.
I think a new SSD wouldn't be as cheap in this thing, it's a weird shape.
Ok so I took out the SSD. Luckily it's not some weird proprietary drive like I thought it was, it's just in some kind of caddy. I took the drive out and there's a bit of damage to the wide, flat cable that comes out of it. I'm gonna hope that's the problem. There doesn't appear to be any physical damage anywhere else, like to the connector inside the laptop or anything
ok so just cable damage?
There's just a tiny bump on the cable. Not really sure you could call it damage
no idea but if thats damage it would make sense why probing fails
I'm gonna order another drive and hope it works. I'm actually surprised how cheap an SSD is nowadays
Thanks for your help, I really appreciate it. Tbh I'll probably be back with another problem regardless of whether or not the new disk works lol I'm pretty clueless when it comes to software
i dont get which cable youre refering to as the ssd slots into the machine into a sata port though 🤔
or you mean the port on the ssd was damaged?
Apologies for the video quality, I have a CAT flip phoine. Have to use rugged tech, so that compromises on things like camera quality
oh that is so weird that cable, yeah those can be super fragile
all of that to just make a non standard connection for the disk ðŸ˜
Do you happen to know what I search to find a new one?
no idea since i dont know what those cables are called for that laptop
but the type of cable is "ribbon cable"
so you can search for "laptop name sata ribbon cable" or something
I'll have a look, thanks
The cable doesn't actually attach to the SSD, it's part of it
wait so you cant unplug this part?
ðŸ˜
I'm trying now and it doesn't seem to want to come off
Oooh ok so I had to use a pry but it came off
does it have a normal sata connector?
SATA III, it says on it
so it looks like this? sorry was rebooting my network server
ignore the cable, it was just the best picture i could find
It does, yes
ok yeah then you just need a replacement cable if you can verify that its not the ssd itself that is broken somehow
but i am going to guess its the cable, i couldnt see the dent you refered to but its the most likely location to be bad since the SSD based on the smart data looked very new
only been powered on for 9 days or something
Yeah, I've barely used it since I got it, because of the slowness issue. I'll order a new cable now. More expensive than a new drive lol
eBay
Hard Disk Drive HDD Cable Caddy Replacement For Getac B300
Panasonic Toughbook & Getac. 1 X B300 caddy. Scanner Printer / Tool Battery. AUTO Diagnostic Tool & Parts. We will try our best to reduce the risk of the custom duties. The best price and quality for you.
😂 The video demonstration
special proprietary cable cost 🙃
Gotta love when companies do that
well look at it like this, if it actually turns out to be the ssd
hotswap OS disks :clueless:
literal OS cartridge slot
What, the USB slot?
It is pretty cool you can hotswap the SSD in this thing
i was saying if you get this caddy with the new cable and it turns out the ssd is the issue somehow, then you have 2 caddys and can keep your OS on a cartridge for the laptop :clueless:
i feel like using windows today kachunk replace the caddy with the one with windows on :clueless:
Ooh yeah that does sound good!
looking on the bright side is something i tend to try do when i can
I'm bad at that. Forget to try. I gotta go for the night, take care! And thanks again for your help