I messed up

So I was trying to setup dual boot on my hp laptop with windows and kali, but something happened and my hp won't boot in, It shows an error "Boot device not found". I tried messing around with my BIOS but nothing worked. Running system diagnostics shows "No hard drive installed". Is there a way to solve this without replacing my ssd.

Enable legacy boot. Don't make two breads. You can reformat that drive, it is not trash. Just live boot Kali from a USB next time.

>>73372 First, I recommend you save this post as a text file and take a photo of it using your smartphone (so you don't lose it). It has information that can be helpful after you got a working Linux installation. >kali Don't use kali as a regular OS. Kali and it's predecessor (Backtrack) was designed as LiveUSB distro. It's better to install a sane GNU/Linux distro (like Arch Linux/EndeavourOS or Void Linux or something else) and then just install the tools you need. >but something happened and my hp won't boot in Looks like You either nuked the whole disk (by making a mistake during partitioning) or you overwrote/deleted the EFI System Partition. Before you do anything, check the UEFI/BIOS settings and try setting the boot device to something else (another partition). In both of these cases, you need to prepare a GNU/Linux LiveUSB. Kali Linux installation USB may work, too. Anyway, here are the instructions: 0. Get an empty USB flash drive with capacity of 4GB or more. 1. Download the installation iso of GNU/Linux distro of your choice and download Rufus (since you can't get the laptop to boot, you need to use another computer). 2. You need to boot from the flash drive that contains GNU/Linux. 3. You may need to start the GUI with startx. When you have a WM or DE open, open a terminal emulator and type lsblk to get listing of all disks and partitions. Make sure that all partitions that should be there, are actually there (it depends on your setup, no one can give you advice). 3.5 You should also use gparted but you probably need to install it first: sudo apt update && sudo apt install gparted ntfs-3g dosfstools e2fsprogs After that, you need to open another terminal emulator and run sudo gparted You should have: * EFI System Partition (a small about ~512MB partition, formatted as FAT32) * Windows partition (aka your C drive) * Windows reserved partition (small) * optionally 1-2 laptop/vendor specific partitions * Linux partition (at least / BUT you likely also have swap and separate /boot partition also. These are formatted as ext4 (or xfs), except that swap partition is just swap. You can use mount and ls to check what contents the partitions have. If the partitions are there, you need to reinstall grub, see: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Grub If you don't know how to use terminal, you can learn it by reading this free book: https://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php (also read the manual with man command) here are the basics: Format is command_name | description --- ls | list files, you can optionally give it a dir. to get more details: ls -alh cd | change directory mv | move or rename files cp | copy files sudo | get temporary root (aka super user permissions), needed for system-wide changes but don't use it when you don't need it (it only does more harm in that case) apt | the APT package manager. use it to search/install/remove/update packages (software). Different distros of GNU/Linux use different package managers. (Arch uses pacman and void uses xpbs). nano | edit text files. it doesn't always come preinstalled with Linux. less | read text files man | read manual pages. try: man 1 intro and man man apropos | search manual (man) pages info | displays more comprehensive manuals for GNU programs (best used from inside GNU Emacs). You can also use a web browser to read these manuals online. command --help | display help for "command" (replace it with nano or something) bash | the default shell for GNU/Linux terminal. Your terminal emulator runs this automatically. you can learn bash scripting at https://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/index.html Bash also supports pipes with command1 | command2 (A pipe makes the output of command1 go to command2 as input). Also, you can chain commands with command1 && command2 (Bash also can redirect the output of command to a file: command1 --help >> my_file.txt ) If you do not have these partitions, then you nuked your disk by accident. You need to reinstall both Windows and Linux. I recommend you use gparted to make a new partition table (GPT) (if you need to reinstall), to get a clean state but note that it nukes all data on all partitions. After you have made a new partition table, you should make the EFI System Partition: create a new partition with type EF00 , it should have capacity of 550MB and format it as FAT32. After this, you should install Windows but reserve free space for Linux, too (during Windows installation process). Linux needs about 30GB~60GB or more. But do not use Kali Linux as your regular OS! it was never designed for that and you will get trouble if you do it. As mentioned above, install something else. I recommend one of these distros: Xubuntu (easiest), EndeavourOS or Void Linux.

>>73372 kali was made to be run from USB live boot, not a daily driver, so it may cause issue like this, my advice would be to reinstall windows and reformat the drive.

>>73372 Windows will "accidentally" :) trash linux partitions if it detects them during install

Maybe you merged your boot partitions with regular partitions?