My Linux isnt as strong as my Windows, so I thought Id ask here before I go poking around any making things worse.
I have two hard drives in my computer. The first drive has a Windows 10 install and is the default boot option in BIOS. On the second drive, I have a Linux Mint 18.3 install. Mint's bootloader is on the second drive. I boot to it by selecting a boot device during boot up. So the two OSs are completely separate. I do run VirtualBox in Windows and boot Mint directly from the second hard disk as a VM.
This is where my problem started. I was uninstalling software on Windows and needed to reboot. I started a reboot and when Windows wasnt shutting down I realized that Mint was still running. However, VirtualBox is smart and it was saving the state of Mint. After that finished, the machine rebooted. However, I was distracted and booted directly into Mint, via the selecting the Mint disk. I would get the Mint logo and "dots," but it wont boot completely. Obviously Mint is not booting, as it was not properly shutdown. However, I dont know how to fix this. Whether I boot directly from hard disk, or start it as a VM, I get this shell:
This is a shell, with a blinking cursor after (initramfs). I have never seen this before, and typing "help" isnt helpful.
Any ideas as to what I should do?
11 Answer
As indicated in the "Boot drops to a (initramfs) prompts/busybox" post you should try running the command fsck /dev/mapper/ubuntu--vg-root -y or similar to check and repair the file system.
If it finds errors it'll go through and fix them and then upon reboot it'll boot normally again.
