Ubuntu cannot open OS , also freezes

Community General Discussion
30

Seems like you have two unrelated problems

  • freezing
  • cannot mount "OS"

The second might be easier to solve, but is mostly pointless. It's likely that the Windows partition is displayed as mountable in the dock on the left, for you convenience. Since you are dual-booting, you should go into Windows and check the volume name of the C: drive. If it's "OS", change it to "Windows" or something to reduce confusion.

Then to get a better lay of the land, in Linux, run

$ lsblk -o NAME,LABEL,MOUNTPOINT,FSTYPE,PARTTYPENAME
NAME        LABEL  MOUNTPOIN FSTYPE PARTTYPENAME
nvme0n1                             
├─nvme0n1p1 SSD              ntfs   Microsoft basic data
├─nvme0n1p2 home   /home     ext4   Linux filesystem
├─nvme0n1p3 distro /         ext4   Linux filesystem
├─nvme0n1p4                  ntfs   Windows recovery environment
├─nvme0n1p5        /boot/efi vfat   EFI System
├─nvme0n1p6                  ntfs   Windows recovery environment
└─nvme0n1p7                  ReFS   Microsoft basic data

This a dual-boot with seven(!) partitions on the SSD

  • Two for Linux: the root with the distro, and a separate home
  • EFI for booting
  • The main NTFS for Windows with a similarly unimaginative name
  • Two recovery environments (why? -- at least they're small)
  • The ReFS is a Windows 11 Dev Drive, which is faster than NTFS

There is no point mounting "OS" because your OS -- Linux -- is already up and running. Mounting an additional disk will not make things better, or resolve freezing. It might make things worse (it will certainly consume some non-zero amount of memory). Some of the speculation why it won't mount sounds plausible, and it's probably fixable. But it won't help.

So why is it freezing? It's unlikely your laptop has some exotic hardware. Since the Linux is on an external drive, could be a flaky drive, flaky cable, flaky port. Could try switching those out (for the port, is there a different one on the computer). If you have have the space, repartition the internal drive, and copy your Linux there. Simply reinstalling Linux on the external drive is less likely to fix things.

Noticeably for dev work like compiling, Linux is faster on the same hardware. No Antimalware Service Executable taking 60% of the CPU for one thing.