[SOLVED] installed Linux Lite - only get GNU prompt

[misterbela]

Sorry to hear you have had a problem.

Please answer all questions as best you can.

Would like to be able to use either Linux Lite OR Windows at this point.

The manual recommends a full back up before the defragmenting and shrinking the Windows installation.
Restoring may be the best option at this point.

Do you have the backups ?

If not will try to help, this may be slow and complex and no guarantee of success.

Do you know if your computer is EFI or BIOS ?
Which install option (Alongside, Erase or Something Else), did you select at the Installation Type screen ?

Gave me an error at the end of the install

Do you recall anything about this message ?

Provided you have the grub> prompt (not grub rescue>) it implies grub is running but the necessary files aren't where grub thinks they should be.
This might be fixable but because something has gone wrong with your installation the state is unknown.

At the grub> prompt, type this command

Code:

set

Look for the line beginning 'root=', it should look something like

Code:

root=(hd0,gpt1)

This is where grub is trying to boot from. In this example, it shows the disk (hd0), the partiton type (gpt) and the partition number (1).
Make a note of the root= and post back what it says.

At the grub prompt check what the filesystem looks like to see if we can identify the Windows and Linux partitions.

Code:

ls

Look for entries associated with the the system disk (hd0 in the example).  It is likely you will see several entries, for example
(hd0,gpt1) (hd0,gpt2) (hd0,gpt3) (hd0,gpt4)

Run ls on each system disk partition in turn, for each one note the file system type and label and post back
For example

Code:

ls (hd0,1)

Code:

ls (hd0,2)

repeat for each partition number

On the individual partition which is listed under root= get a few more details
For example

Code:

ls (hd0,1)/

Summarise what this command shows and post back.

Hello. thanks for your info. Here is what I know: I only want to use Linux, not Windows. Unfortunately I didn't write down the error message at the end of install. My laptop is BIOS. Installation was to be alongside Windows. I looked at root= and got 6 entries (hd0,gpt6). I did the 'ls' for each and again with the '/' after each. I received: (hd0,1) is ntfs, 'system', WinRePartition.ini. (hd0,2) is fat, UUID12C3-08CD with startup.nsh. (hd0,3) is ntfs, System Volume Information. (hd0,4) is ntfs, 'TI10695300B, System Volunte Information, Program files. (hd0,5) is ntfs, 'Recovery', System Volume Information, volume recovery. And (hd0,6) is ext*, lost+found, boot. There...I hope that makes sense. As I mentioned, I only care about be able to use Linux Lite. I did read something about running Boot Repair for Linux Lite as terminal commands. Not sure if that's appropriate. Looks like this old Toshiba laptop was running Windows 8. I appreciate your help and guidence!