Garbled monitor at boot until I close laptop lid and reopen it

Hardware Support
1

I have the wierdest issue. I can totally live with what I have, but I suspect someone will know exactly what the issue is and be able to help me with a fix.

When I boot to 15.3 my screen is garbled with only a few colorful dashes splashed across the top of the screen. If I close the laptop lid (HP z-book), wait a few seconds then open it, my desktop magically appears and I can log on.

So worst case senario is that booting sets me back about 30 seconds. But it would be nice to resolve the issue.

I am using the nouveau driver as I canā€™t get the nvidia drivers to recognize my second monitor. I donā€™t need the nvidia drivers anyway as a second monitor is more important to me than gaming.

Thanks in advance for any help. Love the distro!

2

What all drivers are listed under Zorin Menu -> System Tools -> Software Updater -> Settings -> Additional Drivers? If there are several, you can play around with selecting different ones to see if the problem gets fixed.

3

thanks for the reply carmar. I have tried all the Nvidia drivers but Zorin wonā€™t boot unless I choose the nouveau driver. I would like to know what is happening when I close the laptop lid that makes the screen refresh then show my log in screen. Is it suspending? hibernating? If I know then maybe I can force the system to automatically do that when booting up.

4

It is suspending when you close the lid.
Can you try the following to see if either of these fix your issue (one at a time)?

  1. sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall
  2. sudo apt install nvidia-current-updates nvidia-settings-updates
5

Yikes! Iā€™m going backwards. I tried

[quote=ā€œcarmar, post:4, topic:2240ā€]
sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall
[/quote] now I can only boot by going to advanced options and choosing the recovery mode. HELP!

6

Follow the instructions here: [SOLVED] Black screen after install
Same as steps 1-3 here: https://itsfoss.com/fix-ubuntu-freezing/
and let us know if that works.
Then try #2 in the earlier post: Garbled monitor at boot until I close laptop lid and reopen it

Update - I saw some information about the Discrete Graphics Mode in BIOS possibly being related to graphics issues. Can you try toggling your settings for that, then using the sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall and then seeing if you can boot without having to resort to the lid closing? Your drivers are the issue and the nouveau doesnā€™t seem like the long-term solution here, otherwise you wouldnā€™t have to do the lid closing just to get it to work.
These sites show different issues but are all graphics related:


and
7

I tried the ā€œsudo apt install nvidia-current-updates nvidia-settings-updatesā€ and got:

Reading package listsā€¦ Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state informationā€¦ Done
Package nvidia-current-updates is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

E: Package ā€˜nvidia-current-updatesā€™ has no installation candidate
E: Unable to locate package nvidia-settings-updates

Iā€™ll try rooting around in the BIOS and see if I can find anything related to the Discrete Graphics Mode and Iā€™ll get back to you.

8

After looking at all the docs you suggested and doing some research I think you are absolutely right. It seems to be an integrated video (intel)/discrete video (Nvidia Quadro) issue. Unfortunately I canā€™t find any way to disable it in BIOS on my HP Zbook 17 G6. I can find a lot of info about doing that on the G3 but it doesnā€™t apply to my laptop. Given that I am enjoying Zorin so much and it is only a small hassle at boot Iā€™m just going to live with it. I appreciate your help though @carmar

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9

Update: I am now using Zorin 16 and have no issues at all! Happy day! @carmar

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