PopOS failed to start and switched to a safe operating state.
PopOS failed to start and switched to a safe operating state.
I began using the system and opened Steam when the Gnome interface froze; the mouse responded but other functions failed. After a few minutes, the drive activity indicator faded and I performed a hard reboot. When I accessed the Systemd boot menu, a gray flash appeared from the login screen before it crashed. Switching between the current and old kernels via the boot menu didn’t help. I haven’t tried the recovery partition yet, but I can access Windows, which suggests hardware issues aren’t the cause. After some research, I found a guide on Ubuntu forums about emergency mode and file system errors. On booting into the recovery partition, I see sda as an NTFS-formatted drive that appears to mount automatically. There’s another partition labeled sdb, where PopOS is installed, but I’m unsure how to resolve the “Partition 1 does not start on physical sector boundary” warning. If anyone has insights or solutions, it would be greatly appreciated. Should refreshing the OS from the recovery partition resolve this problem?
The device is under a year old, but there might be options to restore it and retrieve your information.
You're still unsure about a hardware issue despite being able to access the recovery partition and noting the drive's age. Thank you for reaching out.
About six months ago, my 1.5-year-old laptop running Ubuntu (dual-booted with Windows) faced a similar issue. The machine froze while compiling, putting it under full CPU strain, which initially made me think of overheating. After a hard restart, it entered emergency mode. Windows functioned normally, and accessing the broken partition via a live USB worked without major problems (though I’m not sure about missing files in /usr). The first step was backing up /home, which succeeded later. System logs revealed that even though the CPU was at 100%, Ubuntu started a background firmware update through its updater. Recent entries noted firmware updates, including one for my SSD, which was running benchmarks to determine optimal settings post-update (like testing RAID profiles and performance metrics). I couldn’t verify it, but a bug in the update process might have triggered the whole problem. I skipped troubleshooting, just reformatted the Ubuntu partition, reinstalled everything, and restored /home. It operated smoothly for two months before switching to Arch Linux. In your situation, a faulty SSD is a possibility, but other software glitches could also be responsible without causing lasting hardware damage.
That's frustrating. As a fresh Linux user, I'm wondering if I should pull config files from /var or /etc instead of /home before trying to restore the system from the recovery partition. Also, with all my Flatpaks installed, do I need those specific files?