I installed Fedora Workstation 43 on my HP Envy x360 15-fh0001la Laptop.
It was working for a few days, until I tried restarting it today. Now it does not boot. The laptop gets stuck on a black screen and I can’t do anything. Not even the screen for decrypting the drive with a password appears.
I can’t even open the BIOS or the boot menu or anything, it gets stuck on a “F10…Bios Setup Options” message and does nothing.
I was able to get the system to boot like normal once, don’t know how.
Is there anything I can do to try fix this?
Edit 1: Last thing I did was installing the latest software updates via the software program and trying to get the tray icon for Dropbox to work correctly. Did a reboot via the terminal and got the black screen problem. After some tries a was able to boot, but then I did a reboot again via the menu on the right top corner and I can’t get it to boot normally again
Edit 2: So I opened my laptop and reset my ssd, and now I can boot to the system. What can I do to troubleshoot what the issue could have been and to avoid something like this in the future?
This history points to a problem with some connector. Corrosion or a too loose pin in a connector can cause erratic operation. Often there will be no corresponding journal entries. Corrosion is more of an issue in warm, damp locations or after something was spilled. An experienced technician will know by feel if a connector isn’t making solid connections, and may know of issues due to use of a sub-standard connector in certain models. Opening the system to “reset” the SSD may have been enough to restore a weak connection some unrelated to the SSD. Unless you think the SSD wasn’t installed securely, the issue is likely to repeat.
I don’t think that’s the issue, I didn’t see any problem with the SSD itself. No loose connection or corrosion.
I forgot to mention that this happened before, I did a fedora install (no dual boot) and then I wanted to boot to the live usb again to compare some things to my full install. I did a shutdown from the live usb and this same issue happened, only that time I was able to get to the boot menu and back to the live usb to do a reinstall of Fedora (just to be sure there wouldn’t be any problem in the future).
Another thing I forgot to mention is that when I was able to boot into the system again (before the ssd reset) I booted to the GRUB menu instead of going straight to Fedora. I don’t know if it means anything.
I used to have a dual boot setup with Linux mint in an external ssd with windows in the laptop ssd and never had any issue like this.
So I’m thinking the BIOS version is defective (I updated the BIOS to the latest version before installing Fedora) or it doesn’t like booting just Linux in general (I guess is just an HP thing).
I’ll dual boot with windows and Fedora to see if that fixes the issue for now, if that doesn’t work I’ll consider getting a new SSD.
Whilst you’re in there, remove and reseat your RAM. Can’t hurt.
Also, perform a memtest86 on the thing - let it roll for 24 hours. I just dealt with a laptop which was doing the same thing - mostly OK with some weird stuff going on occasionally, and finally it prevented me from getting into the bios - wouldn’t even really turn on properly.
Bad stick of RAM, which I found when I removed & reseated it, which got me to be able to run a memtest86 which spat issues out almost immediately.
Thanks! I can’t reseat the RAM because a soldered to the motherboard.
I did a dual-boot of Windows and Fedora and got the same problem. I tried running Windows after installing Fedora and got a “Repairing” type of message (don’t remember exactly what it said). This time I was able to get to the boot menu by plugging the two USBs I used to install windows and Fedora while the laptop was booting. I was able to get to the hp’s hardware diagnostic tool and the memory and storage test were okay, no problems were detected.
In the BIOS, I noticed there were multiple duplicates in the UEFI Boot order menu (Under OS Boot Manager options) for Fedora. I was thinking the problem may have been putting Fedora at the top of the boot order. I moved Windows back to the top and now the laptop boots correctly. The multiple duplicates show in the BIOS (F10 key) but not in the Boot Menu (F9 key).
So I don’t know what to do now. Any ideas are welcome.