Only grub prompt after partition restore to dual-boot PC

General Help
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1

Recap:
My old Zorin 17.3 Pro laptop's motherboard died; the drive (512G drive) is fine.
I loved the way my old laptop was configured and worked as it was. That so, I'd used clonezilla to save as images both the entire 512G drive and the Zorin partition to a USB drive.

I wanted to upgrade to a 1T drive, dual-boot, Win/Zorin PC.
The old 512G SSD can still boot as an external USB drive.
On the new dual-boot machine, I want to restore my old Zorin installation so on a new 1TB drive, I first installed Windows, then fresh-reinstalled Zorin alongside.

This is how the machine sits at the moment: working Win11 and Zorin dual-booting, but the Zorin install is fresh and not yet overwritten with the cloned partition I want to use from the old PC.

I have tried once or twice already to overwrite the new, factory-bare Zorin partition on the new dual-boot drive with the clonezilla image of the working partition image from the original smaller SSD.
When doing this, choosing to boot to Win11 works fine. Choosing to boot to Zorin gives only a grub prompt.
Even then, I can access the new, non-booting partition via booting from the old 512G Zorin drive in a USB port, then mounting the fresh install.

The new, fresh working factory-fresh Zorin install to the new 1T drive has an FSTAB file that reads:

/---- Begin file ---
| # /etc/fstab: static file system information.
| #
| # Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
| # device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
| # that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
| #
| #
| # / was on /dev/nvme0n1p5 during installation
| UUID=0566e875-1b22-4b08-809a-4022f9a3e09e / ext4 | errors=remount-ro 0 1
| # /boot/efi was on /dev/nvme0n1p1 during installation
| UUID=3618-4FFD /boot/efi vfat umask=0077 0 1
| /swapfile none swap sw 0 0
--- End file ----

And running blkid returns the following:

dev/nvme0n1p5: UUID="0566e875-1b22-4b08-809a-4022f9a3e09e" BLOCK_SIZE="4096" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="1461f5c6-d98d-4cfb-be88-d7d7dd5ffa74"

The original FSTAB file (from the smaller, still-bootable as an external USB drive) reads that the partition was on dev/nvme0n1p2 at UUID=6acd6f11-0785-4645-8e4d-906ab175b8bc

Naturally, after clonezilla partition restoration, the restored partition on the new PC has the same old FSTAB file.

I know I must again copy my cloned Zorin partition over the newly installed (/dev/nvme0n1p5) factory install (and edit the restored FSTAB file to use the new partition and UUID info), but before I do, is there something else I need to record from the new install to make fixing the dual-boot loader work again?

Either way, to fix the grub prompt issue, I'm thinking a Ubuntu rescue boot repair ISO?

Seeking recommendations.
Thanks, all.

2

This is a good first step. Ensure that in BIOS settings, the EFI or MBR setting is set appropriately.

3

I tried an Ubuntu rescue disk from

https://sourceforge.net/projects/boot-repair-cd/files/boot-repair-disk-64bit.iso/download

but it does a quick 2-line text display that is gone in a flash and the screen is just black.
Having read more, I'm pretty sure now that the "grub config" needs to be fixed.

4

Did you try the boot repair with Zorin live boot stick? Boot from the stick, choose "Try Zorin" and then search for "Boot repair" in start menu and launch it.

5

I agree. It is not fstab, but grub where the issue lies.
When you clone a drive, fstab and /boot/grub are your failure points, so you should preserve the ones created by your baremetal install, and transfer everything aside that from your clone.
Restore the Zorin clone, overwriting /dev/nvme0n1p5

Then boot a LiveUSB and launch terminal.

sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p5 /mnt

sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot/efi

sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev

sudo mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc

sudo mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys

sudo chroot /mnt

Then repair fstab, if needed.

blkid

sudo nano /etc/fstab

Make sure your UUID matches /dev/nvme0n1p5 and your /boot/efi UUID matches your EFI partition.
Then reinstall Grub:

sudo grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=Zorin

sudo update-grub

Please remember to unmount after you exit, before rebooting to test.

6

All that sounds doable, but for the last sentence... How do I "unmount after ... exit?"

7

sudo umount /mnt/dev

sudo umount /mnt/proc

sudo umount /mnt/sys

sudo umount /mnt/boot/efi

sudo umount /mnt

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