Fedora 42 Reinstall Troubleshooting (Intel / NVIDIA / Win 10)

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1

Hello all,

This is sort of a follow-up to my first post concerning the installation of Fedora 42 (KDE Workstation) on an Asus G751JY. Repeating the system specs here here for convenience:

  • Processor: Intel(R) Core™ i7-4870HQ CPU @ 2.50GHz 2.49 GHz
  • Installed RAM: 16.0 GB
  • Storage: 477 GB SSD SAMSUNG MZHPU512HCGL-00005, 932 GB HDD HGST HTS721010A9E630
  • Graphics Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M (4 GB)
  • System Type: 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

I didn’t really solve the issue back then, just installed the standard Fedora 42 Workstation instead. Everything was fine, just not great. The startup was very slow, some apps were becoming slower with time, so I did some research. I had (mistakenly) installed the OS to my HDD instead of SSD, so basically everything has to mount on boot. I was hoping to just be able to do a clean F42 reinstall from a live media like before to fix it, but I am back at square one.

No matter what I try, here is what happens when I boot the UEFI live media:

  1. Splash screen (loading)
  2. Black screen for 10s or so
  3. Splash screen (loading, sometimes the welcome tone plays)
  4. Splash screen (frozen)
  5. Power off

Here is a list of all the stuff I’ve tried so far:

  • trying different USB sticks
  • trying different writing tools (Fedora Media Writer and Rufus)
  • trying different spins (Workstation, KDE, Cosmic)
  • booting into basic graphics mode
  • booting with the following commands (normal/basic graphics, all lines separate and simultaneously)
nomodeset
nouveau.modeset=0
rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau
modprobe.blacklist=nouveau

I don’t have much in the way of logs to further specify my problem because I don’t know how to get them. If you can help with this, I will gladly share them.

2

If you have an nvidia GPU (you do) and then blacklist the nouveau driver you will have no graphics driver loaded from the live media. Those 4 commands should not be used with an nvidia gpu (though nomodeset should cause no problems.)

On my systems (with newer GPUs) I use the troubleshooting option from the live boot menu to boot in basic graphics mode (with no additional commands). After the installation is completed things work well, and I am able to install the nvidia drivers. I use only the Workstation edition.

3

Hi Jeff, thanks for replying.

I could have made it clearer, but first I tried the normal boot with no added prompts, then the basic graphics with no additional code lines as well - I get the same behaviour. Can you think of anything else that could be causing my described issue?