(SOLVED) Well I guess I'm in luck

I'm having some kind of issue with my Linux installations. The first time I tried to install Zorin, I did it on my windows 10 machine and I was trying to dual boot. This ended badly, and I ended up having to reinstall windows and put off attempting to switch to Linux for about a year. I finally was able to cobble together a computer from parts I had laying around, to be a dedicated Linux rig. Only now, that computer is giving me the same issue. Which is: When you try to turn the computer on, it just hangs up on the motherboard splash screen. It will never again boot into Zorin.

The first motherboard I tried this on is a Gigabyte brand motherboard with the intel z77 chipset, that I got in 2012 when I built my gaming rig. The next computer, the dedicated Linux rig, is a Biostar brand motherboard that is socket 775, which my father inlaw bought back in 2006. I find it odd that I'd have the exact same issue, on a different motherboard. So I installed KDE Neon to the Linux rig, trying to see if it was some sort of issue with the Zorin installer. Same thing, I only got to boot KDE neon 4 times before it just stopped booting, and freezes on the motherboard splash screen. And you can't even enter the bios, its frozen. It occurs to me that these are both based on Ubuntu. Not sure if that is relevant, but I've read that people have had issues with their installers before.

Has anyone ever had this issue? If I can't get a distro to a least boot reliably, then its safe to say that I can never make the switch from windows to linux, which is quite disappointing.

Hi, It would help if we had specifications of the old rig in more detail:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5449

As for Windows 10 I have pointed you (or someone else) to the best method of installing GNU/Linux alongside 10 (8.1):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlTgaWs9BD0

Well I'm not sure what model the motherboard is. Its a Biostar brand, T-series, from 2006. Socket 775. It has 4Gb of ram, and a dual core 6600 processor. 400 watt psu, with a creative xfi sound card and an Nvidia Gt -620 video card. 250Gb Samsung evo ssd. Made to play 1440p video just fine, and have decent sound, and have short load times. That's my current Linux rig.

My gaming rig is as follows. I tried dual booting on it about a year ago, but I had the same issue.

Gigabyte z77x UD3H motherboard
Intel i5 3570k
Nvidia GTX 970
Nvidia GTX 760 (physics)
16Gb Gskill ram
creative xfi sound card
900 watt psu
samsung SSD
HDD (storage)

I find it pretty odd that both of these systems are having the same issue, one of which isn't even dealing with the boot loader issues of dual booting.

Hi

if not done before I would advise to check and read on the BIOS/UEFI of your motherboard(s)

Code:

https://itsfoss.com/check-uefi-or-bios/

and next the Zorin Core manual in pdf
https://app.box.com/s/71wn2fird2nee6un8t206ugm6mzui9hr

it might overcome your deadlock. success!

zorinantwerp wrote:Hi

if not done before I would advise to check and read on the BIOS/UEFI of your motherboard(s)

Code:

https://itsfoss.com/check-uefi-or-bios/

and next the Zorin Core manual in pdf
https://app.box.com/s/71wn2fird2nee6un8t206ugm6mzui9hr

it might overcome your deadlock. success!

Thanks for the link! I used the article to see if my gaming rig is UEFI. Its legacy, so when I tried dual booting, at least that wasn't the problem. I guess I'll have to install windows on the now dead linux rig to see if its UEFI. Since its from 2006 I'm going to assume its legacy, but I'll check and see just to be sure.

As for the Zorin manual, is there a particular page you were referring to?

Just to let you know I have a GT620 and VGA won't work on Zorin 15 - due to driver issues - has to be hdmi connection for me to get into Zorin 15 Beta. Also you state Samsung SSD - that could also be an issue as some Samsung SSD's refused to work with GNU/Linux - standard HDD no issues.

Well I'm using DVI not VGA. So hopefully I'm bypassing that issue. As for the samsung, I've got some old hard drives around here somewhere, I'll remove the SSD and try one of the old hard drives. Getting a bit discouraged. Starting to seem like you need a multi billion dollar corporation behind it, if you want it to "just work". As the saying goes. I am after all, using nothing but some of the most common hardware of the day.

But I'll keep at it. Maybe in the end I'll just have to buy a pre built linux rig. So that someone already matched up all the hardware perfectly and made sure it works, with a warranty.

I am thinking maybe a hardware issue? If you cant even get to the BIOS screen.
Or maybe your USB stick, assuming that is what you're using to install as it is the common denominator across what seems like 3 different hardware set ups.
What program are you using to create your USB media and brand type USB stick?

Try removing the sound card, hard drive and any other devices such as CD/DVD drives and get the machine a 'bare' as possible to boot the live desktop. If that works add the HDD and try installing than add hardware one at at time.

Can you boot to the 'live desktop' on any of your machines?

I have some older machines with similar hardware, LGA 775 @ 2.5GHz and 3.0GHz with 4GB DDR2, Nvidia GT520, with HDD and/or SSD (Samsung) and all works well.

Resetting BIOS to defaults, checking the RAM is in the correct slots and or reseating it, CPU over heating (try new thermal paste) and so on but still sounds like hardware or the USB or you really lost the hardware lottery with Linux.

That's my food for thought.

Well between this and a few other forums, and hexchat, I've got a long list of things to try. I will try them all, and report back. As for the USB stick its some random sandisk 16Gb. Some cheap one off of newegg, but then again Sandisk is pretty much the top name in flash drives. IIRC their Sandisk Extreme line, is the fastest flash drive you can get. They've always made pretty good stuff. The program I'm using to create the bootable drive is called Yumi.

I would like to ask you what the "live desktop" is. Is that where its running off of the usb stick, right before you install? Then on the desktop, you have a little install icon. Then you click it, install the os to the hard drive, and reboot. Is that the "live" environment?

bennylava wrote:I would like to ask you what the "live desktop" is. Is that where its running off of the usb stick, right before you install? Then on the desktop, you have a little install icon. Then you click it, install the os to the hard drive, and reboot. Is that the "live" environment?

Please refer to the manual as mentioned above- page 16 for explanation and picture.
in brief
you can try Zorin without making any changes to your computer

here you see also the procedure as explained by a third party.

Code:

http://dailylinuxuser.com/2018/01/how-to-install-zorin-os-linux.html

sadly see still replies from vendors too often "No official Linux support, install Windows for best experience!"

Well I found out what the problem is. I have a USB switch, cause I don't want to have to unplug everything from my gaming rig, (main rig) and plug it into the linux rig every time I want to use the linux rig. So I'd just hit the switch, and everything would switch over. Nice and easy. Linux does NOT like it when you do that in the middle of the boot process lol. If you just wait until the OS is fully booted and you're looking at the desktop, it doesn't care. Everything works fine. But if you try and do that while its booting up, it will freeze on the motherboard splash screen. Yall were right about disabling the splash screen, I could see that it froze right when it got to checking the USB stuff.


I think the only reason I didn't catch it sooner, was that it wasn't doing it when I was booting windows. Windows I guess is more tolerant of that and it would just go ahead and accept it. So all I've got to do, is simply wait until linux is booted to hit the usb switch. Then it recognizes that it just had several new USB devices plugged in, and all is well. Thanks to all for the help!

bennylava wrote:Well I found out what the problem is. I have a USB switch, cause I don't want to have to unplug everything from my gaming rig, (main rig) and plug it into the linux rig every time I want to use the linux rig. So I'd just hit the switch, and everything would switch over. Nice and easy. Linux does NOT like it when you do that in the middle of the boot process lol. If you just wait until the OS is fully booted and you're looking at the desktop, it doesn't care. Everything works fine. But if you try and do that while its booting up, it will freeze on the motherboard splash screen. Yall were right about disabling the splash screen, I could see that it froze right when it got to checking the USB stuff.


I think the only reason I didn't catch it sooner, was that it wasn't doing it when I was booting windows. Windows I guess is more tolerant of that and it would just go ahead and accept it. So all I've got to do, is simply wait until linux is booted to hit the usb switch. Then it recognizes that it just had several new USB devices plugged in, and all is well. Thanks to all for the help!

No, let's do a quick rewind - hardware built for Windows was never built to run under GNU/Linux!

Have taken the liberty of changing your OP to "Well I guess I'm in luck!"