I’ve been trying to boot a Ubuntu 24.04 USB (please no discussion of distro choice) but I keep getting a very unhelpful error during the initial startup. I’ve tried using a different USB drive, a different USB port, booting from UEFI. The only thing that has made a change was booting into safe graphics mode. It got to the install wizard but when I got to the end of the wizard it gave me other seemingly useless error messages.

I’m concerned there’s an issue with my motherboard but I don’t have strong evidence to support this idea. I recently took a trip where the computer was fine before I left. I turned it off while I was away and when I came back my main drive no longer worked. I couldn’t boot from it or even see the drive in gparted. I’ve replaced the drive without issue though. If my motherboard is somehow going bad, it’s being very subtle about it. I was ready to blame Nvidia but when I got it into safe graphics mode, it didn’t get to the point of having Nvidia drivers.

Does anyone have any idea what might be going on or any way I can get additional information about the errors I’m getting? The lack of information is really frustrating.

  • Skull giver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nlEnglish
    1·
    5 months ago

    Looks like Gnome (the software that handles the GUI) died. The installer (which other people reported issues for) is still up and running, funnily enough.

    If you have Nvidia hardware, this could be related to the Nvidia drivers being unstable; they could become more stable after installation of the proprietary ones once Ubuntu is on your main hard drive.

    I doubt this is a motherboard issue. However, the drive and the GPU malfunctioning could be a sign of a faulty power supply (happened to me!). You could also check for software updates for your motherboard: I’ve seen similarly confusing errors when someone managed to boot their PC with a CPU that was officially only supported several motherboard updates later; updating the firmware fixed everything in that case.

    If the PSU is fine and there are no updates, I would recommend checking Ubuntu 23.10 (if you think the problem will be solved within a few months) or 22.04 (if you think your problem will be solved within 8 years) instead.