Starting with Fedora 38, kernel 8.5.4, I believe, Fedora WILL NOT BOOT on my HP Envy laptop. I was using the old kernel to get it to boot up. But, with Fedora 40 removing the old kernel the machine will not boot. I tried Ubuntu, and it is too restrictive like Apple IOS and I am really NOT HAPPY (pissed off actually) with Fedora not booting. I actually had to put Windoze back on the machine just to be able to use it, what a disgrace. I have looked on the forums for a fix and it appears that I am the only person having this issue. A fix would be wonderful.
Before you start asking for dump files and log files … One, the machine will not boot up, so how in the world am I going to get them … Two, I put Windoze on the machine … Three, the live CD will not even boot the machine it just goes into vaporlock.
My personal feeling is its the CRAPPY Nouvou (SP) video drivers as I have had problems with them in the past. Why Fedora doesn’t have the option to load the NVIDIA drivers, I will never know. At least Ubuntu ran with the NVIDIA drivers but Ubuntu is crappy, old, and restrictive.
Hello @scots ,
Welcome to the Coimmunity!
Sorry to hear you’re having difficulty with your graphics chip. Here at ask.fp.o, we don’t like to trash talk other distro’s, so please avoid doing that.
Personally, as someone who has spent countless hours expending energy trying to get my nvidia stuff working I can sympathize entirely. I have to admit I just went the AMD only route to solve my issues, but not everyone can do that or desires to.
It could very well be your chips ability to be used by the shipped nouveau, but you should still be able to boot into something. Even trying the usb live image to temporarily mount your existing root partition can get valuable access to fix the underlying issue.
As for the actual fix, you haven’t really given any technical details about your system, what were the commands used in upgrade, etc … As I mentioned, even an unresponsive system usually can be temp mounted to diagnose configuration issues. Perhaps the kernel module didn’t get rebuilt properly, or maybe the bootloader info was not correctly finalized, you’ll never know if you overwrote your failed install with Windows.
As a dedicated nvidia user I can sympathize with the frustration.
Since you said the f40 install media will not boot I have to ask the exact symptoms are and what all you have tried.
In most cases like yours, the first boot screen seen from the installer media gives 3 option.
Test the media and Start fedora
Start Fedora
Troubleshooting (which allows booting in basic graphics mode)
When users have trouble booting with an nvidia GPU it seems that for almost every case the boot in troubleshooting mode works to allow the installation then installing the nvidia drivers provides the permanent fix.
Have you tried the troubleshooting option? If so what were the results?
Are you booting in uefi mode or legcy mode?
For quite some time I have been using an older kernel (8.4.5), I believe, to boot the laptop. Every time the kenel updated, it kept the older kernel because that was the kernel that was running at the time of the update.
Fedora 40 is released. I ran the online update and the system still would not boot on the new kernel. But, this update deleted the older working kenel. I then thought that maybe I need to just perform a clean installation of Fedora 40. I had generated a USB drive with the Fedora 40 Live CD before I ran the update. I tried booting that, no go. The system only allow me to decrypt the drive and then it just goes dark screen and locks up and sits there … nothing. It even takes a minute or so for the power soft switch to turn the machine off. I then loaded Ubuntu and it worked fine using the NVIDIA drivers, better than Fedora with the nouveau (sp) drivers, but I have no intention of using Ubuntu on a long term basis.
I then spent HOURS loading Windoze just to get an operating machine, in shame …
My frustration is that I have been using some form of Fedora, only, since the early 2000’s with good results except every now and then I have to wrestle the nouveau (sp) drivers.
I am using the UEFI mode boot, but I am getting beyond that point.
I do think Anaconda should provide a method to select the video drivers during the installation.
Your description is strange and seems odd for someone who has used fedora since the early 2000s.
Fedora by default always keeps 3 kernel versions. The one booted, the newest one just installed, and one other – only removing the oldest kernel not actually booted.
The grub menu allows the user to select the kernel to boot, but recently has been hidden by default. It can be shown by holding down the shift key while booting.
The only way I know to have kept a kernel that old would have been to continually boot with that kernel, and that means you would have needed to set that kernel as the default so it never ever booted a newer kernel when an update was performed (or never update after that kernel was installed)
There are many threads here about troubleshooting when fedora fails to boot from the live install media on a machine with an nvidia gpu, and almost all suggest using the Troubleshoot option on the very first screen which allows booting an nvidia GPU in basic graphics mode (as I noted above)
A reinstall would not have the option to decrypt a drive unless you were attempting to reuse an already encrypted partition, so that comment is confusing without enough detail about what partition that may have been.
Having used fedora for about 20 years you should already be aware of the proprietary nature of the nvidia drivers and that fedora has no way to include them, thus the lesser quality nouveau driver.
Coimmunity!