New install help

Charland

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I'm new to linux but I've played around with a few distros. I'm wanting to try cinnamon but I keep getting a black screen with a blinking cursor when trying to load from the grub menu. From my searches it seems to be a graphics issue. So far I've verified the .iso, did a memory test and also tried creating a bootable usb with multiple programs. I've tried the 'nomodeset' and 'grub_gfxmode=1920x1080'. When I do this I get two lines of text. First one says "Loading /casper/vmlinuz". Second says "Loading /casper/initrd.lz......READY but that's as far as it gets. It keeps restarting my pc. I've installed a few other distros with no problems. Any ideas where to go from here? I'll keep digging for solutions, thanks guys.

PC Specs:
Windows 10 Pro x64
ASRock Fata1ty X370 Gaming X Mobo
XPG 256GB M.2 SSD
8BG G.Skill ddr4 3200
Ryzen 3 1300x cpu
XFX RX 580 gpu
 


with distro?

I tried both cinnamon 19 and 18.3. I forgot to mention that it does the same thing in compatibility mode. It will run the loading sequence and the computer restarts itself.
 
Last edited:
cinnamon is no disrro it´s a desktop.
 
Linux Mint 19 with cinnamon?

Yes, both mint 19 and 18.3. I posted in the mint section of the forum that's why I didn't think to specify. I apologize about the confusion. It doesn't help that I'm new to linux, I was starting to get confused myself lol.
 
So far I've verified the .iso

Can you clarify by what means?

(Wizard appears in a puff of smoke, casting CDs like Frisbees)

Also
  1. when trying to load from the grub menu.
    So does that mean you have installed Mint, a Grub Menu is showing with Mint on top and Windows Boot Manager further down, and it is from there that the problems arise?
  2. What was your method of burning the .iso eg Rufus, Yumi or other
BTW Welcome to linux.org :)

Chris Turner
wizardfromoz
 
Can you clarify by what means?

(Wizard appears in a puff of smoke, casting CDs like Frisbees)

Also

  1. So does that mean you have installed Mint, a Grub Menu is showing with Mint on top and Windows Boot Manager further down, and it is from there that the problems arise?
  2. What was your method of burning the .iso eg Rufus, Yumi or other
BTW Welcome to linux.org :)

Chris Turner
wizardfromoz


I used the MD5 and SHA checksum utility to verify that you had posted in another thread. I'm getting to the 10 second boot countdown screen but it is not installed. If I let it self boot I get the black screen with a blinking cursor. If I press a key to run compatibility mode or edit the boot command manually with 'nomodeset' or 'grub_gfxmode=' I see some loading text then it says ready but it reboots the pc every time at this point and loads back into the boot countdown screen. In creating a bootable usb I've used Rufus 3.3, Unetbootin and at least one or two more programs I can't recall the names of off the top of my head. All with the same results.
 
Mornin' from DownUnder :)

So it sounds as if the Distro is fully installed, but that the installation of the bootloader sequence has not quite "taken" properly. This can be remedied in at least two ways.

As you have not yet been able to use the Distro, there are no settings to save, nor personal data to safeguard.

With either choice you should be sure that you have your Windows 10 recovery solution in place.

CHOICE A
would involve using your Live Linux medium (USB stick) to simply reinstall Linux over the top of your existing, not working, install. The Mint installer is called Ubiquity (devised by Ubuntu) and in Ubiquity, where you get the choices to erase disk, install alongside, &c, you would choose "Something Else". You would then go through the process of identifying the partitions to be used, manually. If you have a UEFI setup, rather than BIOS/MBR, you would have an ESP (boot/efi) of maybe 500MB in place, leave that alone. If you have Swap, leave that alone.

The only thing you would need to do is to take your root partition (where the main OS is, and described as / ) which would likely have 7 - 8 GB consumed, and tell the Installer to format it and use it, this would erase the previous data. Proceed to completion, reboot, see how you go.

This choice is likely the simplest and one I would advocate.

If, however, you want to get your hands dirty, under the hood so to speak, with command line stuff, then

CHOICE B involves again, using the install stick, and from there we would initiate a process called "chroot". Chrooting allows us to change to Root of the afflicted system. From inside that, we can then make and install Grub again, update Grub, exit and reboot and hopefully have a working system.

So think about the options, and whether you want 18.3 or 19 onboard.

Cheers

Wizard
 
No it is not installed. I'm trying to boot the live usb. I can't get past the menu, it keeps restarting. I have windows on a separate ssd. I went as far as wiping the drive I was using for linux and resetting the uefi. I also removed the ssd from the computer that has windows 10 on it. I tried mint 18.3 cinnamon, mint 19 cinnamon and some linux called deepin. They all do the same thing and restart after trying to boot from the live usb. The only thing I can think of is I updated the uefi awhile back but I already had mint 19 mate installed at the time. I'm stumped...I guess I'll try with no drives installed, if that doesn't work possibly downgrade back to the original uefi version.
 
I understand now :)

The only thing I can think of is I updated the uefi awhile back

Can you explain that? Did you "flash the bios", and if so, have you checked that the settings for eg Secure Boot, Fast Boot, Legacy (Compatibility Mode) have not changed to become Linux -unfriendly?

This may be the key, and perhaps rolling back the update will remedy.

Wizard
 
I understand now :)



Can you explain that? Did you "flash the bios", and if so, have you checked that the settings for eg Secure Boot, Fast Boot, Legacy (Compatibility Mode) have not changed to become Linux -unfriendly?

This may be the key, and perhaps rolling back the update will remedy.

Wizard

Yep I flashed the bios. I do believe secure and fast boot are off but I haven't noticed any settings for legacy. I'll poke around in the bios and get back to you. Thanks for all the help so far, I appreciate it.
 
Only problem with that is that with the 19 series of Mint, they no longer ship KDE. So choices would have to be MATE or Xfce.

KDE can still be used by installing 18.3, which being based on Ubuntu 16.04's framework, has support until April 2021.

Cheers

Wizard
 
I downgraded the bios, I'm pretty sure it's unrelated because I got Xubuntu to install no problem, still a no go on mint cinnamon. I'm going to try mate again and see what happens. I'm not dead set on running mint cinnamon, at this point I'm just curious what the issue is.
 
Me too ! :)
 

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