Installation/live booting stuck on logo

Question

Note: I'm a newb and have no even remote idea what causes the problem, so I will be rather verbose and describe everything that happened.

I use an ASUS X550V laptop (Intel Core i7-6700HQ CPU, 8 gig RAM, nvidia 950m dedicated GPU). This laptop has Windows 10 on it (was NOT preinstalled) and I want to install linux as a second OS on it.

I have never installed Linux on this particular laptop before.

I originally downloaded Linux Mint 18.1 (bear with me, this IS an Ubuntu problem too) and used Rufus to burn a bootable USB.

The installation menu did not allow for direct installing, only starting a live session and moving from there. Live session did not boot, the process got stuck on the linux mint logo.

The installation menu did however offer to use "compatibility mode", then the OS booted and I successfully installed, however when booting the already installed OS, the same problem appeared (stuck on logo). I could sometimes weasel through recovery mode to boot successfully and edited grub to not include the splash screen. Then it seemed to work fine, but it only sometimes booted into MDM, most of the time I got a CLI, and if I did "startx", it got stuck and did nothing.

I started experimenting, reinstalling several times, same issues.

I booted into Windows and downloaded Kubuntu 16.04.2, burned to USB via Rufus. The only option was to start a live session (not even compatibility mode was offered), the same issue happened (stuck on logo).

I went back to Windows and disabled fast startup (later on I used ESC to get rid of the logo and see the text and it moaned about WIndows not being shut down, but it was not the line it got stuck on) and checked that secure boot is disabled.

I also figured the USB might be the issue so I got some DVDs and burned Linux Mint onto a DVD.

Same thing happened. Tried Kubuntu again (with fast startup disabled), still got stuck (made screenshots of the text, will post them after the post).

I had a xubuntu 16.04.1 ISO on Windows (one that I successfully installed on another Asus laptop before, an older one which I sold to a friend since then), I burned that to USB too.

Here now I had a direct install option, it seemed to go through, but I stopped the install to continue troubleshooting. I also tried live booting xubuntu and the same thing happened as before. Afterwards I tried to do the direct install again and this time it didn't work either (with the same issue).

The only thing I still have in mind, which I haven't done yet is to use a distro NOT from the Debian/Ubuntu family (say Manjaro), but nontheless I'd like to either install Linux Mint or Kubuntu, so my issue still stands.

Screenshots: http://imgur.com/a/Z4bIw

EDIT: Manjaro doesn't work either. Different text though.

Solution 1

I have solved this problem, though some instability remains, I am not sure if it is related or not.

I did it with Kubuntu, during live booting the USB one is greeted with Grub. I pressed "e" to temporarily edit the config. I replaced "quiet splash" with "nomodeset". The OS booted and I could install but it was in a super-low resolution.

Apparantly the problem was that the nouveau driver which is default played very badly with Geforce 950M. After the install was done I edited /etc/default/grub to replace "quiet splash" with "nouveau.modeset=0 splash" and replace GRUB_GFXMODE=something with GRUB_GFXMODE=1366x768 (my native screen res).

After reboot this fixed the resolution. Then I installed the proprietary drivers and all issues were gone (well I have some programs randomly crashing and other instabilities but I am not sure if these are any way related).

Solution 2

Unless I am mistaken which I will readily admit happens often, this hereseems to be what you are going through.

Comments

[Bence Racskó]

The issue seems similar enough but I cannot absolutely boot anything atm, so the answers are not the most useful to me.

[jez]

This got me out of the same jam with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS installation, though I had to continue using "nomodeset" instead of "nouveau.modeset=0 splash". It's also worth pointing out that you have to run sudo update-grub after editing /etc/default/grub (just like it says in the comments at the top of that file, but it took me a few iterations to notice it).