I've tried balena etcher twice and ventoy once. Ventoy at least got me beyond the black screen. I'm now all out of USB sticks so can't try Rufus until I get two more from Amazon late next week. (Downside of living in a small town). I also tried redownloading the zorin file. I do now get beyond the blank screen but not by much. I get a screen with the HP icon and a Z icon. The Z icon pulses for about 5 minutes and then turns into the word Zorin then nothing else. I left it for 1 1/2 hourts but absolutely nothing else changed. I also sent a request to Zorin support but the limit of their advice was to turn off secure boot and fast boot which I had done before starting any attempts. So no real help there. I've sent them another support request and may hear back tomorrow based on prior experience.
When you boot the LiveUSB, from its grub menu you should see an option to tap the E key - to Edit the boot parameters.
From there you can arrow key to "quiet splash" and add the parameter i915.enable_psr=0 to disable Panel Self Refresh.
Ahhhhh to be young again ..... I turn 80 this weekend .... LOL
Tried that. Also switched from RAID to AHCI without changing the outcome.
Hmm, should have been AHCI from the outset...
Ok, what about: nomodeset or i915.modeset=1
would I just type those in after quiet splash? does it matter if they are on the same line or a new line?
Yes, to both. It does matter about spacing and placement.
So, it would look exactly like:
"quiet splash nomodeset"
Or
"quiet splash i915.modeset=1"
For clarity; quiet is its own parameter - which means that you do not see a wall of verbose printout text on the screen during boot.
splash is a parameter that instructs the Splash Screen to be displayed.
nomodeset gave me the same as I've been getting: Pulsing Z icon for about 5 Minutes that then changes to the word Zorin and then hangs.
i915.modeset=1 gave me just a permanent black screen
I went back through the BIOS settings to make sure resetting to factory defaults hadn't messed anything up but it hadn't still AHCI anf still disabled secure boot.
Zorin support has tried but haven't suggested anything this forum hasn't already come up with. I am waiting to see what they come up with next.
This has been interesting process. I'm now comfortable with lots of things I wasn't before like editing bios and even changing RAID to AHCI neither of which I knew existed two days ago. I also learned about ventoy and editing things in Grub menu also things I never knew existed, But very frustrating that I can't get beyond whatever road block my computer is putting up.
This is true. And despite the frustration - the wanting something to work already, I personally enjoy learning the new things and feeling more empowered and capable.
I have one more suggestion. This one involves learning new things.
Enter the grub menu by bapping the esc or the tab key when you see the motherboard splash screen. You should see listed options to boot Zorin OS - select the one that ends with (Recovery)
In the recovery menu, enable networking. Then back up to the menu and arrow key down to Drop to root prompt
Add the TuxInvader repoistory:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:tuxinvader/jammy-mainline
Then update sources and install the 6.12 kernel.
sudo apt update && sudo apt install linux-generic-6.12
I suspect that the 6.8 kernel is where you are having issues.
Which is the motherboard splash screen? What do you mean by update sources?
This is the display you see upon boot - a splash screen - usually the Motherboard logo like Gigabyte. Or AMD.
The command above includes that action with sudo apt update - APT is the Debian Package Management system. And apt - all lowercase - is the software included on Zorin OS that handles that. Sudo is SuperUser Do - as in "do this"
So the command uses SuperUser privileges to tell apt to update its sources:
sudo apt update
The && signifies a command to follow the first assuming that the first ran successfully.
sudo apt install linux-generic-6.12
The source update is necessary due to the need to add the TuxInvader repository in order to gain access to the linux-generic-6.12 package.
Making the whole terminal command:
sudo apt update && sudo apt install linux-generic-6.12
You can enter the two individually, if you prefer.
Sorry to be dumb but do you mean the screen that has the menu with F9 for boot and F10 for BIOS? Or do you mean the next screen which is where I pick the USB stick to boot from? Or the next is asking about Zorin or the next is the one with the try zorin options where I hit E to edit the menu?
Argh! You are not being dumb, I am. I forgot that you have not even gotten Zorin OS installed...
There are a lot of threads on the forum... sigh.
Yes, this won't work if you have not installed the Operating System, yet.
To have a higher kernel, pre-install, you would need to compile it into the .iso you are booting from.
Scratch that idea, for now...
Maybe the solution in this thread is worth a try?
Well that seemed to get me there except at the very end of the install process it said there was a fatal error and when it said to restart it seemed to be Zorin and asked me to remove the install stick but then took me straight into windows instead of giving me a choice. I have to go out now but I guess I should try again later. I'll try a restart first but probably have to try the install again. Do I just boot from the stick and go through the whole process again or will that try to put an additional copy?
Well I tried loading Zorin again but it said I had multiple operating systems (i.e. Windows and Zorin) and offered me a choice of installing alongside them. I didn't want 2 copies of Zorin at least because that would use up a lot of disk space. I tried something else option but couldn't figure out what to do with it. I guess I need to find some way of deleting the existing Zorin OS and then start over, or maybe if I just go with dual boot install like I did before it would automatically overwrite the previous attempt.
It looked like there was a version of Zorin because when I exited the set up I was in it but I cannot see how to access it otherwise because there isn't a menu to pick it. There was an ubuntu boot option in the F9 menu but that just gave me a command prompt type screen with not much on it. What's missing seems to be the system choice menu that I was expecting to be at the beginning of boot process.
Any advice?
In the "Something Else" Option, click on the Zorin Partition, then click the icon (-) to delete that partition.
It will label as Free Space.
Click on the Free Space and click the icon (+) and format it to ext4
Then select that partition to install Zorin OS to.
I’m doing something wrong. After doing the - and the format to ext4 it says the partition is 114GB (correct) and 42.7GB is “used” and that it is Zorin OS 17.3. I thought it would all be free. Anyway when I click on it and click install it says “no root file system is defined. Please correct this from the partitioning menu”
To sure exactly what this means or how to do it or what system to use.
I think a photo is needed for this... Can you take and post one?
Good news, this is easy.
Any root filesystem is the parent folder of the entire tree.
So in your Selection to Format the partion, select "Beginning of the drive space", primary partition, Ext4 and the mountpoint (This defines the root filesystem) is /
That is it. Type in a forward slash: /
Tried to photo the screen but even in non HDR it’s 5MB and max allowed is 1