Some Basic Problems I faced in Ubuntu
By: Krunal Rank
Tags: Issues, Linux, Ubuntu, Problems, Dual Boot

Now comes some of the difficulties that I faced in Ubuntu.

Now for all those tech guys out there who worked a lot on these softwares, I would like to say that the problem wasn’t due to your code, it was likely my problem and my mistakes which led me to get entangled in these situations. I am, in no manner, writing this as an insult to the creators of respective programs.

I found that Ubuntu was rather slow in many File Operations such as copy, cut and paste operations from different hard drives.

Well, kudos to the Ubuntu forums and its communties, I found that Ubuntu maintains a dirty memory, a sort of data that is yet to be written on the disk. Modification of the configuration of this dirty cache management is likely to improve your performance in this case. You can read more about the issue here.

Apart from that I found that my PC started booting into some environment that I was not aware of during that time, one or more times.

The scenario looked like this:

initramfs prompt at Boot

This boot situation was likely due to some sector errors in hard disk. I had to fix it using the following code, which actually starts checking and fixing the errors in the disk drives:

fsck /dev/sda4

exit

The above command checked for errors in my OS drive /dev/sda4 and fixed everything after I provided ‘y’ as input when prompted. You can read about this sudden prompt here.

Never mess with NTFS partitions.

I don’t know how many of you faced it, but when I tried to resize the NTFS partition where Windows was installed (using gnome-disks), it gave me a sudden error, forgive me as I didn’t take a screenshot when the error was shown.

But after this process, I was unable to boot into Windows.

I fixed the situation using a bootable drive that I created and resetted Windows and then resized the partition from Windows instead of Ubuntu.

PC Boots into Windows directly instead of showing GRUB.

This issue occured after resetting Windows.

I searched the internet about this problem and landed here. Unfortunately, this didn’t work for me.

I even tried modifying my EFI configuration. For those who don’t know what EFI is, head over here. In simple terms, it’s what handles the Operating Systems in your PC and takes over after the BIOS kicks up. But sadly, this brought me no result.

So I used my Ubuntu Live USB. Fortunately, I had a Ubuntu Live USB with me. (Believe me, have a recovery drive in handy if you like to mess around with your systems).

I booted into Ubuntu Live USB. The problem was probably in GRUB. So, I reinstalled GRUB in my Ubuntu partition. I did this using Boot Repair. I followed all the instructions shown in the GUI. For more information about it, here’s the link.

My Filesystems were made READ-ONLY.

Well, this was frustrating. I wanted to move some files in and around my disk drive. But I faced a consistent error reminding me that I don’t have permissions for writing on the disk!

After trying all possible ways, I found a fix. It was mentioned here. Actually, when you boot into Windows and shut it down, it actually doesn’t shut down. It probably keeps track of your drives. This is a part of Windows Fast Boot policy.

All I had to do was to disable Fast Boot option in Windows Power Options which did the trick.