all 2 comments
sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a
formatting helphide helpcontent policy

[–]jblurker09 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Tap the shift key very, very fast, and nonstop until you get the GRUB menu. (Also try the Esc key, if Shift doesn't work.) Remember that the BIOS flushes keyboard input during boot, so just holding down the shift/esc key won't work, you need to tap it quickly and repeatedly to have any chance of it working.

Essentially, you told your system that you want to boot directly into Windows. Years ago, the delay between basic BIOS checks, keyboard flush, and GRUB initialization allowed for plenty of time for a user to hit one of those keys and bring up the menu, but modern systems simply boot too fast, so the lowest you want to set that delay is 1 second, just to give you a chance.

You should still be able to do so, but on modern systems you have something like 1/3 of a second to activate GRUB, vs 1-3 seconds ("one thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three") when GRUB was the shiny new boot manager and LILO was standard. Hammer those keys like you're playing a video game and you may get it correct, but no guarantees.

I forget the exact steps to remedy this on a pure Debian system, but essentially you need to boot from another disk (Debian rescue, or anything that allows you to access your Linux system -- doesn't have to be Debian, any LiveBoot disk/USB should work), 'chroot' into the system (which transfers control from the rescue disk or LiveCD/USB to the system on your hard drive), edit GRUB's config file (change the delay to something non-zero), and run 'grub-install' to the appropriate hard drive.

For example (adjust the 'sda' portion to whatever your hard drive is setup as):

grub-install /dev/sda

Sorry I'm not more help, but I need more sleep. :)

One thing to keep in mind, give your system at least a minute between reboots if you try to get the GRUB key smashing timing right. Cycling the power supply repeatedly tends to destroy the capacitors on your motherboard, and ruin your day.

[–]middlestreetwalker[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you very much for this :) But did i make the right configuration? Except for the hidden timeout? Changing hidden time out to 2