Can't boot into Fedora on Dual-Boot Setup

Ask Fedora
1

Hello! I’ve been running a dualboot setup on my machine for the past week with Fedora 42 installed on my main NVME drive, and a Windows 10 LTSC installation living on a SATA SSD drive. The Fedora installation was done using all the defaults, and the Windows installation is NTFS.

I’ve configured the BIOS to have Secure Boot disabled, and to default boot into the Fedora Linux drive.

It was working fine for a few days, but last night I booted into the Windows 10 installation to do some work, and then shut down. This morning, I tried to let the PC boot up into Fedora Linux as it does normally, and I see the following:

  1. Fedora Linux spinner pops up along with motherboard manufacter logo
  2. Screen goes black for 2 seconds
  3. Fedora Linux spinner pops up again for a few seconds
  4. Screen goes black (note the monitor is on and is receiving signal, but I see nothing on the screen)
  5. It seems stuck on this stage, so I hit the power button afterwards:
  6. I see the Fedora Linux spinner again for a couple briefs seconds before the machine shuts down

I can replicate this without fail. Note that I did not do any system updates to my Fedora Linux installation between the day I did the initial installation and now.

EDIT: To add, I’m able to boot into Windows 10 fine.

I was able to boot into a Fedora Linux 42 Live USB and that is how I am typing this forum post now and providing the screenshots below. Hoping I can get some help diagnosing, fixing my problem, and potentially preventing this from happening again in the future.

Below is some potentially relevant information:

Motherboard: ASRock B660M Pro RS
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT
CPU: Intel Core i5-12400F
Monitor: MSI 1440p connected to GPU with DisplayPort

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2

Should like fedora boot up is getting stuck waiting for something.

When you see the spinner type ESC so that you can see the boot up messages.
What are the last few messages?

Also you may be able to get to a text console by typing Ctrl-alt-F3.
Does that work?

If so you can login and will be able to run more commands to debug what is happening, which we can advise on.

3

Hey Barry, thanks so much for replying.

When I see the spinner and hit ESC, I do see some bootup messages – unfortunately it is way too fast for me to read. I was able to snap a photo, but I don’t see anything alarming:

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I was also able to press Ctrl-Alt-F3 and see the text console (my machine name is desktop). I’m even able to login. What can I do from here?:

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Not sure if it matters, but I switched to using an HDMI cable instead of a DisplayPort which didn’t help. Although now it seems things are “slow” enough that I can see GRUB and the GRUB command line if I need to access it:

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4

To follow up from my last response, I logged in after hitting Ctrl-Alt-F3 and ran journalctl -xe to see some logs. I’m pasting here what I think looked revelant (sorry I’m a Linux noob).

I think what looks most relevant is the mention of kwin_wayland crashing and dumping the core.

In addition, I also saw some non-red-text logs saying kernel: block nvme0n1: No UUID available providing old NGUID. I’m only mentioning because that sounds like it is my main drive.

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5

kwin_wayland must work for you to get to the KDE plasma desktop.
But it is crashing for you as shown in the photos of the journal.

I can also see the version off kwin_wayland is up to date and the sam as I am running.

You could add a new user and login as that new user to eliminate config files in your user’s /home causing the issue.

sudo useradd <username> -p <password>

Does that new user login without trouble?

If so it’s likley that you have a bad file in ~/.config

6

I have that message on my system as well, and it looks harmless.

You can add -p warning to the journalctl command to only show errors and warnings.

1 Like
7

Thanks.

I tried this as follows:

  1. Hit black screen as usual
  2. Ctrl-Alt-F3 to access console and login as my normal user
  3. Ran sudo useradd newuser -p newpassword
  4. Ran exit to go back to login
  5. Logged in with new credentials
  6. Still at console; Plasma doesn’t seem to start
  7. journalctl -xe does not show any logs related to kwin_wayland

I tried rebooting and logging in, but still see black screen, even after logging in as the new user.

8

I notice that kwin (as opposed to kwin-wayland) is at 6.3.5.2, where the latest is 6.3.5.3.

Could be worth updating, but it’s a long shot, I haven’t seen any reported bugs similar to what’s going on here.

9

kwin is the X11 version. It is not used under Wayland.

10

Ok so it is not your config.

Can you post the output of inxi -Fzxx so we can know what you hardware is?
If you have a 2nd computer you can use ssh’s scp to copy the file from the failing system so you do not have to use photos.

11

The 9th line before the beginning of the “stack trace” section refers to a library from the kwin rpm package:

Module libkwin.so.6 from rpm kwin-6.3.5.2.fc42.x86_64

1 Like
12

Unfortunately, it looks like my system does not have inxi installed and looks like my WiFi adapter is not working because it is not able to reach the network. :frowning:

13

I attempted to use another monitor, thinking maybe it was related to my MSI monitor settings, but no dice.

14

Can you use a wired connection to do an update and install inxi?

15

The modem is in another room, but now remembered I have a powerline adapter I can try to get a wired connection. I’ll give it a shot and report in a bit.

16

Huzzah! Here is the output from inxi -Fzxx:

System:
  Kernel: 6.14.9-300.fc42.x86_64 arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 15.1.1
  Desktop: N/A dm: SDDM Distro: Fedora Linux 42 (KDE Plasma Desktop Edition)
Machine:
  Type: Desktop Mobo: ASRock model: B660M Pro RS serial: <superuser required>
    UEFI: American Megatrends LLC. v: 15.03 date: 05/14/2025
CPU:
  Info: 6-core model: 12th Gen Intel Core i5-12400F bits: 64 type: MT MCP
    arch: Alder Lake rev: 2 cache: L1: 480 KiB L2: 7.5 MiB L3: 18 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 800 min/max: 800/5600 cores: 1: 800 2: 800 3: 800 4: 800
    5: 800 6: 800 7: 800 8: 800 9: 800 10: 800 11: 800 12: 800 bogomips: 59904
  Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
Graphics:
  Device-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] vendor: XFX driver: amdgpu
    v: kernel pcie: speed: 32 GT/s lanes: 16 ports: active: HDMI-A-1
    empty: DP-1,DP-2,Writeback-1 bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:7590
  Display: unspecified server: Xwayland v: 24.1.6 driver: gpu: amdgpu
  Monitor-1: HDMI-A-1 model: MSI MAG274QRF-QD res: 2560x1440 dpi: 109
    diag: 684mm (26.9")
  API: EGL v: 1.5 platforms: device: 0 drv: radeonsi device: 1 drv: swrast
    gbm: drv: radeonsi surfaceless: drv: radeonsi inactive: wayland,x11
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6 compat-v: 4.5 vendor: mesa v: 25.0.7 note: incomplete
    (EGL sourced) renderer: AMD Radeon Graphics (radeonsi gfx1200 LLVM 20.1.5
    DRM 3.61 6.14.9-300.fc42.x86_64), llvmpipe (LLVM 20.1.5 256 bits)
  API: Vulkan v: 1.4.313 surfaces: N/A device: 0 type: discrete-gpu
    driver: mesa radv device-ID: 1002:7590 device: 1 type: cpu
    driver: mesa llvmpipe device-ID: 10005:0000
  Info: Tools: api: clinfo, eglinfo, glxinfo, vulkaninfo
    de: kscreen-console,kscreen-doctor wl: wayland-info x11: xdriinfo,
    xdpyinfo, xprop, xrandr
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel Alder Lake-S HD Audio vendor: ASRock driver: snd_hda_intel
    v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1f.3 chip-ID: 8086:7ad0
  Device-2: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel
    pcie: speed: 32 GT/s lanes: 16 bus-ID: 03:00.1 chip-ID: 1002:ab40
  API: ALSA v: k6.14.9-300.fc42.x86_64 status: kernel-api
  Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.4.5 status: active with: 1: pipewire-pulse
    status: active 2: wireplumber status: active 3: pipewire-alsa type: plugin
    4: pw-jack type: plugin
Network:
  Device-1: Intel Ethernet I219-V vendor: ASRock driver: e1000e v: kernel
    port: N/A bus-ID: 00:1f.6 chip-ID: 8086:1a1d
  IF: enp0s31f6 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
  Device-2: Intel Wireless 8260 driver: iwlwifi v: kernel pcie:
    speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 05:00.0 chip-ID: 8086:24f3
  IF: wlp5s0 state: down mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-1: docker0 state: down mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Intel Bluetooth wireless interface driver: btusb v: 0.8 type: USB
    rev: 2.0 speed: 12 Mb/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 1-9:3 chip-ID: 8087:0a2b
  Report: btmgmt ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: up address: <filter> bt-v: 4.2
    lmp-v: 8
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 2.29 TiB used: 980.96 GiB (41.9%)
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: MSI model: M482 2TB size: 1.82 TiB
    speed: 63.2 Gb/s lanes: 4 serial: <filter> temp: 34.9 C
  ID-2: /dev/sda vendor: A-Data model: SU800 size: 476.94 GiB
    speed: 6.0 Gb/s serial: <filter> temp: 30 C
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 1.82 TiB used: 980.59 GiB (52.7%) fs: btrfs
    dev: /dev/nvme0n1p3
  ID-2: /boot size: 973.4 MiB used: 356.1 MiB (36.6%) fs: ext4
    dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2
  ID-3: /boot/efi size: 598.8 MiB used: 19.3 MiB (3.2%) fs: vfat
    dev: /dev/nvme0n1p1
  ID-4: /home size: 1.82 TiB used: 980.59 GiB (52.7%) fs: btrfs
    dev: /dev/nvme0n1p3
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: zram size: 8 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: 100
    dev: /dev/zram0
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 28.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: amdgpu temp: 32.0 C
    mem: 54.0 C
  Fan Speeds (rpm): N/A gpu: amdgpu fan: 0
Info:
  Memory: total: 16 GiB available: 15.45 GiB used: 1.67 GiB (10.8%)
  Processes: 318 Power: uptime: 48m wakeups: 0 Init: systemd v: 257
    target: graphical (5) default: graphical
  Packages: 558 pm: nix-default pkgs: 64 pm: nix-usr pkgs: 403 pm: rpm
    pkgs: N/A note: see --rpm pm: flatpak pkgs: 27 Compilers: gcc: 15.1.1
    Shell: Bash v: 5.2.37 running-in: systemd inxi: 3.3.38
17

Apologies, but I got impatient and just ran sudo dnf update --refresh, rebooted and that seemed to fix things.

I am a little nervous knowing things broke without me doing a system update. I wonder if it was related to my GPU, as the 9060 XT is a relatively new card?

1 Like
18

By any chance do you have Fast Boot enabled in the BIOS?

From what I’ve seen (don’t know all the technical details), this can result in Windows leaving devices in a ‘dirty’ state when it shuts down. Otherwise, like you say, it’s a bit weird that you saw this after a Windows system update without changing anything about your Linux install.

19

Thanks for replying.

I made sure that Fast Boot and Secure Boot were disabled in the BIOS.

A slight correction – I did not do a Windows System Update last night, I simply booted into Windows, did some work, and then shut down. This morning when I tried to boot into Fedora is when I saw the black screen.

Perhaps my Dual-Boot part of my original post ended up being a red-herring?

20

you have to disable fast startup in windows, otherwise windows will do hybernate when you shutdown.

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