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.
- Reboot and hit F2 to enter the BIOS utility screen
- Select Advanced Mode
- Boot
- Click Add New Boot Option
- In the Add boot option line type the name of the option,
kalifor me - Click on the Path for Boot option
- Select the drive under Look In
- Browse for the .EFI file from the list. Mine was in
EFI\kali\grubx63.efi - Click Create
- 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.
- Save and exit
Why was this so difficult? Because it can be. Hopefully, this wasted hour will help save someone else some time.
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