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Recovery from a bootable USB drive

2 min. readlast update: 11.04.2025

Recovering the Boot Loader Using a Bootable USB Drive

If your laptop can’t boot into the operating system, you can use a bootable recovery USB drive to repair the boot loader.

🛈 Note:
You can follow this guide to create a bootable USB drive.

1. When You Can’t Boot

If you can’t access your operating system or its recovery menu, it can often be repaired from a bootable USB drive.

  1. Insert the USB drive.

  2. Turn on your laptop and repeatedly press F7 to open the boot menu.

Boot Menu

2. Boot from the Recovery USB

Use the arrow keys to select your USB drive and press Enter to boot from it.
You’ll need to use the live mode of the USB — this is typically labelled Live, Try, or Start.

For Ubuntu, select Try Ubuntu.

Live USB Menu

3. Check the Disk Path

Open the GNOME Launcher and start Terminal.

Open Terminal

Then enter:

sudo fdisk -l | grep 'nvme\|sda'

4. Identify the Correct Partition

This command lists your storage devices — usually either sda or nvme.
Locate the main system partition (typically ending with a p2).

Partitions

5. Mount the Partitions

Most systems have two partitions: one for the main system and one for EFI.
Mount them by running:

sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot/efi sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev sudo mount --bind /dev/pts /mnt/dev/pts sudo mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc sudo mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys

6. Enable Networking (Optional)

If you need internet access while in recovery, run:

sudo cp /etc/resolv.conf /mnt/etc/resolv.conf

7. Connect to the Installation

Next, connect to your system installation with:

sudo chroot /mnt /bin/bash

8. You’re Now Connected

You are now in a root terminal running from your system’s internal drive.
Chroot Session

9. Run Diagnostics and Repairs

From here, you can perform various repair tasks:

  • fsck – Check the file system

  • GRUB Repair – Update the boot loader

  • dpkg – Fix broken packages

If your issue was caused by an interrupted update (often leaving the system stuck at a GRUB prompt), try:

sudo dpkg --configure -a sudo apt -f install

You can find additional help in our guide on using recovery mode.

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