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Fix “Loading initial ramdisk” error on Linux Mint 19. In this article, I will show you how to fix this error. Error on Linux Mint 19 computers or Ubuntu 16/18.04 machines.
Error “Loading initial ramdisk”
This is an error that prevents your computer from booting into the operating system. Even though you may have just used it normally a while ago.
The symptom is that when you click to start the computer, it only shows a black screen and nothing else. The computer stays as it is and does not boot into the operating system.
When you turn off the device using the power button and then restart it. At this point, the operating system will automatically switch to the Advanced boot menu, which allows you to start the OS in recovery mode.
When you choose to boot from Advanced recovery mode, the following error screen will appear.
And the computer will keep this window intact without booting into the operating system.
Cause of error “Loading initial ramdisk”
After researching from Linux Mint’s forum, I discovered that the intel-microcode package after updating caused this error. It makes the computer unable to boot into the operating system.
To see what version of the intel-microcode package is being used on my computer, I use the following command.
$ dpkg -s intel-microcodeAnd as a result, the computer is using version 3.20191115.1ubuntu0.18.04.2. I suddenly remembered that I updated this package last night through Update Manager on my computer.
How to boot OS when encountering error “Loading initial ramdisk
Reading this, you may be wondering if your computer cannot boot into the operating system, how can you check the software package version?
Next, do the following to “temporarily boot” into the operating system first.
Look at the Advanced options… window that I mentioned above, now press the e key to access the grub boot menu.
Next, look for the line that says:
ro quiet splashAnd add the following content to the end of that line.
dis_ucode_ldrThe result looks like this picture.
Finally, press the key combination Ctrl+X to save the edit and reboot the operating system. Now I’m sure you can boot up your computer and log in.
Fix the root cause
After you have logged into your computer’s operating system, open the terminal and type the following command.
sudo apt-get install intel-microcode=3.20180312.0~ubuntu18.04.1The above command will downgrade the version of the intel-microcode software package. With this lower version, I checked and my computer booted normally again.
Now you can check the version again after installing it on your device.
$ dpkg -s intel-microcode
Package: intel-microcode
Status: install ok installed
Priority: standard
Section: non-free/admin
Installed-Size: 1530
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <[email protected]m>
Architecture: amd64
Version: 3.20180312.0~ubuntu18.04.1
Depends: iucode-tool (>= 1.0)
Recommends: initramfs-tools (>= 0.113~)
Conflicts: microcode.ctl (<< 0.18~0)
Conffiles:
/etc/default/intel-microcode 6a68a0e6e2d2ef001f1a374ece3c8558
/etc/kernel/preinst.d/intel-microcode 4324b7d12701909b3a76bb5c6468a571
/etc/modprobe.d/intel-microcode-blacklist.conf 71327241f6583b34944e638a955aba91
Description: Processor microcode firmware for Intel CPUs
This package contains updated system processor microcode for
Intel i686 and Intel X86-64 processors. Intel releases microcode
updates to correct processor behavior as documented in the
respective processor specification updates.
.
For AMD processors, please refer to the amd64-microcode package.
Homepage: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/search?keyword=linux+microcode
Original-Maintainer: Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <[email protected]g>Conclusion
Hope this article can help you quickly solve your problem. At least you don’t have to sit around trying to figure out why your device is like that and how to handle it. If your device has the same problem, follow this article and I’m sure it will work.
