Hi,
first of all it is very difficult for me to explain my problem in English and it will be even harder to understand your explainations about what to do as Linux is quite new to me beside an attempt a few years ago and working with it now for six weeks.
I have two HP laptops (Envy and spectre) and everything seemed to work quite fine til last week when a kernel-update came through - this was the Envy, the spectre is just for very needed backup and keeping my windows files intact (dual boot).
After the update Gimp started behaving very badly and quite often the system shut down with no warning or better I was logged off and asked to log in again.
On Friday I left the open laptop by itself for some minutes and coming back the usual login screen was to be seen but with no possibility to log in - I could not use the box you put the password in, everything was greyed out. Using any key did nothing, waiting did not help. I shut it down and started again, got the usual HP/Zorin screen, I heard the machine working, the lights were blinking but the screen stayed black.
I did try to fix it with Claude, but tried to be careful and also looking at guides. It said what I read in here too: Grub and disabling some options in boot menu (which already were disabled as otherwise I would not have been able to install Zorin). I reinstalled drivers, tried loading a display manager and other stuff. I got lists in which the system told me everything loaded correctly but the screen stayed black.
I went in there with booting from usb stick, trying Zorin and changing stuff I cannot remember right now (because of course I have to be quite ill right now but need the laptop for working on my novel I have to finish in two weeks so I am rather nervous and feverish and all of that on top, sorry if my understanding will fail sometimes and sorry for rambling)
It all looked good, I put the files I was working on when the laptop left me into the cloud, so not too much worries on this side of the problem) I restarted and it stayed black. I decided after reading and thinking it might the kernel problem so when I opened the spectre one I did not allow it to install the update.
It worked fine, really everything was even better than on the envy who really is the stronger machine. So I decided to do nothing for the moment with the envy and take care of it as soon as possible.
And then of course disaster had to strike because I got a phonecall and it took the minute too long and there it was: the log back in screen all greyed out and not ready for use. I waited and maybe I even tried talking the damned thing into working again using nice words and less nice ones. Did not help, who would have thought?
So reluctantly I pressed the outbutton again and I knew already what would happen. Which it did: starting, logo, black screen. I asked Chat GPT this time just to see what it would say but did not use its advise. It also talked about the kernel, secure boot and advanced options (which HP never showed to me no matter what I tried) and now I am here completely desperate and helpless.
I would need to get the Envy going - no experiments with the spectre and its windows part.
Who can help and has the nerve to do so? If it were in German - so much the better although there are of course still many words that are foreign to me after 26 years on windows ...
Again sorry for rambling, trying to keep it together.
I can understand English but in connection to this topic and my fever I might get lost. (And Hubby is OZ, that does NOT help at all 
)