Recovering From Windows INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE Errors

Kali Fun Box

In Nov 2022 I purchased an Asus BR1100CKA for around $90 out the door. It isn’t much, a Celeron N4500 (1.1GHz), 4GB RAM, 64GB eMMC storage, plus an M.2 SSD slot. This is a bargain bin laptop, nothing more. I was looking to build a Kali fun box. Something to play with and show the kids neat things that are not video games.

My ideal specs were:

• Inexpensive - something I don’t care about if it wound up broken
• Lightweight
• Rugged
• Long-lasting battery (4+ hours)
• USB-C charging
• Powerful enough to run a recent Linux distro

This bargain-bin laptop checks most of my boxes. I get about 6 hours of battery. The M.2 SSD slot made dual booting a snap with a Crucial P3 500GB PCIe M.2 2280 SSD I found for $25. The downside is that the Intel AX201 doesn’t support monitor mode. I’ll pair it with an ALFA AWUS1900 USB wireless adapter and a Proxmark3 RDV3 to make a neat little fun box.

Recovering From INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE Errors

Funny story. I left Windows on the 64GB eMMC drive. I boot into it every so often to install the plethora of updates Windows has. Who knows, I might need it for something.

Today, after installing the last 3+ months of updates and rebooting, I was greeted with this:

After running around in a repair loop a few times, a few “SFC” and “DISM” things, I gave up. I decided to blow the installation away. For some reason, I usually have an issue with Windows, Asus laptops, and storage drivers. I figured some driver update I installed borked. I have no data on this drive and I don’t want to waste any time on it.

Not wanting Windows to “help me” by wiping my Linux install, I pulled the M.2 SSD. After pulling the drive I booted the computer. It was a more morbid curiosity rather than a troubleshooting step.

Windows booted up. (¬__¬)

Windows did go through the remainder of a system restore operation I started earlier. Once booted into normal mode I reinstalled all the Windows updates and rebooted. Everything looked happy. I rebooted again because, well it is Windows.

I reinstalled the M.2 SSD and guess what, it’s not listed as a boot option anymore.

Simple fix, we need to relink EFI.

1. Reboot and hit F2 to enter the BIOS utility screen
2. Select Advanced Mode
3. Boot
4. Click Add New Boot Option
5. In the Add boot option line type the name of the option, kali for me
6. Click on the Path for Boot option
7. Select the drive under Look In
8. Browse for the .EFI file from the list. Mine was in EFI\kali\grubx63.efi
9. Click Create
10. Make Boot Option #1 Kali by clicking on the box or go back to EZ Mode and drag it on the right side menu to the correct boot order.
11. Save and exit

Why was this so difficult? Because it can be. Hopefully, this wasted hour will help save someone else some time.