Let me preface this by saying I know very little about all this so please forgive my poor lingo or understanding.
I'm dualbooting Zorin and Windows 11 on an external SSD that I have to move between two computers every two weeks because of my living situation. I moved again today and everything stopped working. It will fluctuate between a couple different issues, seemingly completely on random:
-Stuck in emergency mode, unable to boot normally
-My drive isn't being mounted correctly at all
-Sometimes it will randomly proceed to login, but become unresponsive as soon as I enter my password
-Sometimes it will get past the login screen but my graphics drivers don't work and then it goes back to issue 1 or 3
I'm running out of ideas here. The only pattern seems to be that it's some drivers issue? Please help.
if you are dual booting please check in Windows and disable 'fast boot'
control panel > power options
on the left of this window
click 'change what the power buttons do'
in this window you will see a menu at the bottom
disable 'fast boot' save settings and restart the system.
see if that improves the performance of the system
best of luck Steve ..
I only now noticed I did a typo and wrote windows 11 instead of windows 10, which is what I am actually running.
I did however manage to find the way to disable Fast Boot and it seemingly fixed the Emergency Mode issue, so we're getting somewhere!
There's still however the login issue that is unaffected. After entering my password, everything freezes and becomes unresponsive, all I see is the login page with my unmoving cursor. Got any idea how to fix that?
Before reaching the Login Screen, you must select which OS to boot from - that is the Grub Menu.
From that grub menu, can you select Advanced Options for Zorin, then select Zorin On 6.xx.x.xx - an earlier kernel to see if that allows you to login and reach the desktop.
@Aravisian Sadly, I did try running an earlier kernel and it has the exact same login issue... I'm very stuck here. Thank you for reply anyway and in advance if you have any further solutions
Since this is a portable external drive you are switching back and forth with, my next thought is that it was unmounted before it finished writing files.
If it was me, my next step would be to run fsck on that UnMounted external drive to perform a file system check.
Does Zorin run in Wayland or Xorg? When You are on the Login Screen, click on Your Profile so that the Password Field appears. When it is appeared, You should see a Gear Icon in the bottom right Corner. Click on it. You should see 2 Options:
Zorin Desktop
Zorin Desktop on Xorg
Which one is active, You can see at the Dot at the Beginning. Try it with switching to the other Option and then log in and see if it works.
@Aravisian Sorry for my lack of knowledge but how can I unmount the external drive if I am actively using it?
Edit: do I have to do it from windows or something?
Windows cannot run fsck, it can only run ntfs chkdsk
But you can use a LiveUSB of Zorin OS, the same way as when you installed Zorin OS - boot the LiveUSB to its desktop, then open the Partition Manager with the external drive plugged in.
Select the external drive partition you have Zorin OS installed to - then click the Gear Icon for its Settings
From there, ensure it is Unmounted. It must remain plugged in.
Running any file system checker, whether Windows or GnuLinux, on a mounted volume can cause damage - which is why it must be unmounted.
From there, you can run fsck by directing it to that drive ID from the LiveUSB terminal.
You can use lsblk to determine the drive ID if you need - and use this thread to verify what you are seeing.
If you do not have a LiveUSB Handy... If you boot your computer as is - reach the Grub Menu, then select Advanced Options For Zorin, then select Zorin On 6.xx.x.xx (Recovery)
In the Recovery Menu, error key to second from bottom should be an fsck option.
This one is a bit less thorough than performing it the way outlined above - but may be good enough.
@Ponce-De-Leon
It was running Xorg so I now changed it to Wayland. A sound I earlier added to play on startup now played, but monitor is still unresponsive as before
@Aravisian thank you for your very thorough answer! I'm trying to follow best I can but I'm running into an issue where the arrow keys don't work in recovery mode...? Got any idea what that's about?
@Aravisian I tried just now. They do in fact work, however trying to follow your previous instructions that were interrupted by the keys not working, I end up on this screen
Got into my desktop in the old kernel 6.17.0-20, but in a safemode of sorts , so my displays were using some other driver or something. I got there by spamming CTRL-D in the emergency mode screen. This came up after hitting restart
Just to clarify - you did reach the desktop - But after rebooting, you saw the above screenshot? That aligns with the GPU file inconsistency you outlined in the O.P.
What that screenshot shows is corruption in your root directory, /etc/systemd/system/default.target, SystemD cannot resolve it and tries to fallback. But, the important thing is that this returns the File System Files are damaged or inaccessible.
This is an external drive, connected by USB...
To me it looks like unsteady USB connection has created a lot of filesystem errors that have built up over time.
Are you able to access the drive in any way to backup personal data?
