Lenovo 110S - Multiple boot records on eMMC even when attempting clean install

[DaveLembke]

So I have a Lenovo 110S with 2GB RAM and 32GB eMMC. It was running Linux Mint 20.2 Cinnamon without any issues until a week ago there were updates and I allowed it to go through updates to which when it said reboot required, I went through the reboot and it crashed into a Linux boot loop.

I took the USB stick that I used originally in installing Linux Mint 20.2 and booted off of that and attempted to install clean by wiping all data. All looked good and when it rebooted it now dumped me out to grub and not to the GUI desktop of Linux Mint.

Tried yet again and got the same result. Made a new bootable USB stick in case the one I was using was corrupt and got the same results.

When looking into the boot options it shows 2 instances of Linux Mint as ( ubuntu ) and still has an old record of Windows 10 that no longer exists. Looking in BIOS the system has in list of devices to boot from also this list. When looking for a way to deleting these from the BIOS's bootable device list it gives option of using DEL key ( only if those are unprotected ), of which they must be protected somehow because I cant remove them.

What gets me is that all the bootable instances I would think should be all under the eMMC 32GB and its got them as their own even though its all stored on the 32GB eMMC.

Wondering if anyone has any suggestions of a bootable tool to wipe the eMMC clean so I can start fresh. Google search stated I can use DiskWipe.exe and I attempted to use this with BartPE but Bart PE is too old in that it doesnt detect the eMMC storage controller. Thinking there must be something out there to download and make a bootable USB stick, run it and wipe the eMMC of all boot records etc and start fresh.

Hopefully someone can suggest one?    Way back in the day I use to use DelPart on a bootable CD that I made, but without the driver support to access the eMMC that wont work either.

Attached some pics to show the boot menu as well as the BIOS listing of bootable device list.

[TheWaffle]

Any luck Dave?

Have you tried PartedMagic? https://partedmagic.com/
It has been my goto for years. Its handy as it uses very recent versions of the kernel.

[DaveLembke]

I ended up using Windows 10 to clean up the mess. During installation of Windows 10 it gives option of where to install it to, that screen has options to select partitions and delete them and wipe the MBR. And so I used that to wipe the eMMC clean and then left it with no partitions and backed out of the install.

Then installed Linux Mint 20.2 back to it again. It appears that the BIOS looks at the eMMC at POST and with multiple records it was showing multiples in listing. All is better now with a single instance of Linux as reported by BIOS as well as no more orphan data from prior installs.