I’m facing a strange issue that seems to be specific to Fedora.
Every time something related to the Kernel, or even the Kernel itself, gets updated, my PC will refuse to POST when I next try to turn it on. It eventually posts if I keep power cycling it multiple times (usually between 2-10 attempts). Sometimes, I even need to unplug it from the power outlet for a couple of minutes; otherwise, it just freezes during startup.
To be clear, it’s not freezing when trying to boot into Fedora. It freezes while my BIOS is loading, which prevents me from accessing either my BIOS settings or the Boot Menu.
This issue only happens on Fedora. I’ve tried other distros like Ubuntu, Arch, CachyOS, and Mint, and this problem has never occurred on any of them.
I’m currently back on Mint because I grew tired of this issue. I have already tried updating my BIOS to the latest version, doing a clear CMOS and performing fresh installs of Fedora also didn’t solve the problem. It always returns after the first major kernel-related update, sometimes even non Kernel-related updates causes the issue too but most of the time it’s when it has something to do with the Kernel.
Check if Legacy boot is off in the bios, if you boot from UEFI. Or viz versa if you use Legacy boot only.
2.1 Also deactivate all boot options you never use if there are.
If UFI boot, clean up the old entries. Fedora has the issue, that for every system you start, it makes a Fedora entry (all look the same). This might be difficult to find out the correct boot entry.
Legacy Boot is disabled but i have Legacy BIOS Features enabled cause my GPU won’t work unless i enable that(it’s a common bug on many older OptiPlexes), this doesn’t change the boot type since my system still boots on UEFI.
And there weren’t any old boot entries to clean on my BIOS and Fedora was the only available boot option.
ok, as you still have a second hard-drive, could it be that you still have some boot flags active on this hard drive which interfere ? Or like an usb drive which is plugged in when updating? Are there other boot devices listed in the bios which could cause confusion? Just deactivate everything which you not use, like booting from Network etc. If you really need it once, you switch it on manually.
The secondary drive had no boot partions on it, i even did a zero fill on it once just to make sure, and i had no other bootable devices connected at the time.
Thats whats bugging me, im trying to understant why this is happening with Fedora specifically, maybe it does something during updates that causes my BIOS to have a stroke?
And i managed to get back on Mint because my PC does eventually manage to boot if i keep on power ciclyng a bunch of times, and i took that oportunity to clean the drives and re-install another distro for the time being.
Just thinking in principle (I don’t have a great idea what happened on OP’s system).
The OS could write an entry to the UEFI NVRAM that was for some reason unbootable, and set that entry to be top priority.
Ideally the BIOS would then show you an error message when you failed to boot, and take you back to a menu to choose a boot device. But I could imagine a BIOS with poor error tolerance just freezing on this.
Even then, you could normally mash the F-whatever key to get into the menu before it tries to boot the default entry. But if there was a zero timeout on that, maybe there’d be no way in.
If it literally doesn’t even get as far as posting though, idk.
Yeah, this BIOS does this whenever it errors out on something, so whenever it doesnt post i need to play a guessing game to try and find why it happend and this time seems to be that Fedora is doing something that it doesnt like.
I’ve messed around with a few of my BIOS settings to see if it would fix the issue, i will mark this issue as solved if i manage to use my computer for a full week without it(the BIOS) having a stroke again.
Alienware, Dell Pro All-in-One, Dell Pro Max Micro, Dell Pro Max Slim, Dell Pro Max Tower, Dell Pro Micro, Dell Pro Slim, Dell Pro Tower, Dell Tower, Inspiron, ### OptiPlex####, Vostro, XPS, G Series, G Series, Alienware, Dell Pro, Dell Pro Max …
The problems you describe are known by dell. They state:
No boot device found error
The following error may appear after operating system installation: No boot device found. This error occurs when the device BIOS boot sequence is set to Legacy mode.
Note:
Only Windows 10 and higher and Linux operating systems in UEFI boot mode are supported on these specific Dell computers.
Ensure that UEFI mode is enabled in the BIOS before trying to reinstall the operating system.
Using an Optical Drive to install the operating system is not supported in legacy mode as there is no Optical Drive option in the Boot Menu.
The above Dell computers have a 7th-generation Coffee Lake processor (and above). The computers are designed to boot exclusively in the UEFI; boot environment.
As a result, the operating system fails to boot if Legacy boot mode is selected on these computers.
Please do what the article says, to get rid of the issues you describe. You might have to reinstall fedora switching off Legacy mode first. And switching it on afterwards if you really need.
Unfortunetelly that isn’t the issue im having, my system is already set to boot in UEFI mode and it never hit me with the error of “No boot device found”.
The issue im having doesn’t even display an error message, it just freezes instantly, even before the Dell logo or any other type of logo shows up, my monitor doesn’t even receive any video signal when it freezes like that.
Like i said in a previous reply, i’ve changed a few settings in my BIOS and reinstalled Fedora to see if it will persist after changing some of the settings(i didn’t change them blindy, i looked into the documentation of my pc and changed things that appear to be related to my issue), i’ve also onpened up my pc and reseatted both my GPU and RAM sticks for good measure.
Yes, it does have one but sadly when the issue occurs it doesn’t beep nor does the LEDs on my pc start blinking orange(which would be the color that it would turn when and error occurs, according to the manual for this pc)