Android x86 not booting anymore from internal eMMC

[Patrick Wirth]

I´ve dual booted Windows 10 and android x86_64 for a while now on my Acer Switch 3 convertible but however this is possible, it is impossible to reinstall android x86.

Let me explain everything in detail:
Windows 10 was installed by myself (no manufactor install) and I just resized the C:\ partition to have 10gb free for android.

My method for installing android x86 is unusual but simple:
Starting setup, selecting a fat32 partition, let it install the efi grub2, CTRL+ALT+DEL
Starting setup, selecting the extra 10gb, ext4 formated partition and continue the installation, but skip grub installation.

The used fat32 partition is the efi system partition created by microsoft.
The grub bootloader didn´t affect the microsoft bootloader in any way, so both OS were still bootable.

So I got two efi entries in my firmware (bios):
Windows Boot Manager and a empty box (which was android x86 in this case)

Everything worked well until I used some root tools and crashed the system which ended in  broken google apps and services and I don´t know how to reinstall those without a recovery system like twrp.
I decided to reinstall android x86 and also upgrade to the newer oreo build which is avaiable now.
Installation worked well, also dual boot was still working.

I noticed some bugs in this build and i wanted to go back to lineageos 14.1 (x64, r2) > My issue occured the first time!
Since this step I´m unable to boot android x86 (doesn´t matter which build) from the internal memory of my device.
External harddrive with a similar installation works just fine...

I don´t get a entry in my firmware and it is booting windows instead of grub.

I decided to completely wipe the storage without any results.
At the end I tried a ubuntu installation which worked just fine (also booting from internal storage).

Still unable to boot into android x86.

I don´t know what happened, it must be something like a massive bug.
I would try to reset the bios but there is no real reset option and I´m unable to open up the device for removing the battery.

Has somebody an idea whats going on with that thing?

[Chih-Wei Huang]

2018-08-20 7:32 GMT+08:00 'Patrick Wirth' via Android-x86
<andro...@googlegroups.com>:

Just install android-x86 (or lineageos) to the partition
and install EFI GRUB2.
(Say yes to "Do you want to install EFI GRUB2?")
This should work. If not, get the log from /tmp/log
via Alt-F2. Also check what Alt-F4 shows.

> I decided to completely wipe the storage without any results.
> At the end I tried a ubuntu installation which worked just fine (also
> booting from internal storage).

Alternatively, you can just install android-x86 rpm in
Ubuntu as explained in the release note.

> Still unable to boot into android x86.
>
> I don´t know what happened, it must be something like a massive bug.
> I would try to reset the bios but there is no real reset option and I´m
> unable to open up the device for removing the battery.
>
> Has somebody an idea whats going on with that thing?

--
Chih-Wei
Android-x86 project
http://www.android-x86.org

[Patrick Wirth]

I did the efi grub2 installation but it didn´t work.
No entry in bios/firmware

I decided to use diskpart to clear mbr/gpt aswell so Windows could reinitialize the partition style and for some reason this fixed the issue.
Now i reinstalled windows and android x86.

There is definetly something that ubuntu does different when installing efi grub2 but on this specific device, booting anything is kind of an adventure...
Designed for Windows i guess.

Thank you anyways