So I keep getting different errors while trying to boot from a liveusb (Manjaro). I have tried absolutely everything and I’m all out of ideas.
The installation media is fine, it boots on another machine. I’ve also tried booting from a DVD and another Linux distro (mint). Fast boot and secure boot disabled. I’m attempting to fix a broken installation that also won’t boot after it crashed, so this configuration has booted a liveusb before.
So far I have changed the CMOS battery (it’s been dead for a while), I unhooked everything possible, I moved the RAM around, I ran memtest, I tried open-source, I tried proprietary, I tried different peripherals, I tried the igpu, I tried re-writing the latest bios, I tried yelling at it, nothing.
Funny thing is that it’s a dual boot system and windows 7 boots just fine. Stress tested and everything.
What gives? I can start making a list of the error messages but they are usual different things not loading or it just freezes. I think maybe the motherboard is dying but why doesn’t it affect windows? I’m all troubleshooted out. I’m tired.
How old is the Manjaro ISO you used to make the LiveUSB?
It’s likely that if you have an old manjaro install and you are using an old liveusb, it’s a GPU issue.
Assuming you can get it to start to boot, which I’m going to take the liberty of doing because you gave some vague suggestion about error messages. I’m assuming that’s kernel output.
Yes. It gets me to the main boot screen, but never all the way into the OS. Sometimes it gets to the GUI but it freezes.
New ISO right from Manjaro as of yesterday (5.9). Also tried an older one that I used to install from a year ago.
Yes, sometimes it shows kernel output where some packages fail or hang. Sometimes a weird “systemd caught abrt dumped core as pid” message just pops up. Other times the root account is locked. And other times it is just black and frozen.
Yes, its normally overclocked and has been stable since new. It’s at stock clocks now though. I thought about the USB controller… There’s Intel usb 2.0 & 3.0 ports, and 4 asmedia usb 3.0. All of which I have tried using to boot from. I also tried booting from a live CD over SATA.
I bumped it up a bit and no difference. Also tried to boot from another drive with a fresh install of Manjaro over SATA and nothing. It’s allergic to Linux at this point.
Ok so super weird development. I thought you might be on to something so I disabled all cores except one and turned off hyperthreading and now it boots both the liveusb and my normal installation just fine. Pro: I can update everything, con: I now have a single core processor.
Obviously it’s a hardware problem. I just don’t know why it would be completely stable in windows and not boot Linux.