Zorin 18 freezes at shutdown/reboot

General Help
1

Hi there!

I'm a newbie linux user. I tried several distros, but Zorin is the best for me. My only problem is that, it often freezes at shutdown/reboot, sometimes while booting up. More precisely, when I press shutdown, the computer stuck at one point. The cpu fans are spinning like crazy. I know my laptop is built for Windows, but I really want to change to Zorin OS, because it is so much better. This happens not just on Zorin, but every distro I tried, no matter it's based on arch, debian etc... When the system boots up correctly everything is fine. Drivers and functions are OK. For me, it looks like HP's core software doesn't like Linux and somehow the computer and the linux system can't decide who is the boss. As I said, sometimes it happens while booting up too. Boots up til HP's and Zorin's logo appear and stuck. Fan is spinning at full speed. Only force shutdown helps.

Please help! Thanks in advance!

-HP 250 G9
-Intel core i3 1215u cpu with integrated gpu
-no dedicated graphics
-16GB RAM with NVMe SSD

  • just pure install of Zorin 18 Core, no dual boot
  • secure boot disabled
2

Welcome to the Forum!

  • What Tool did you use to create the Bootstick?
  • Is Your BIOS in UEFI or Legacy Mode?
  • When that happens and You press the Esc Key, You should see a lot of Code Lines. Are there any Errors or holding Processes?
3

In some threads in internet with similar HP problems they wrote that it helped to disable energy safing settings in the BIOS or set the USB3 setting (at pre-OS options) from “automatic” to “enabled”.
But I'm not sure if that can help or is recommended to do.

4

I used Rufus, Balena Etcher.
My BIOS is in UEFI mode
Yes, I made Linux to show these processes instead of just the logo screen and definitely there were processes that were stuck. I don't remember any error signs.

+1: This happened a 100% sure when I started the computer, booted up fine and I immediately restarted or shut down the computer. For me it looked like the system couldn't shut down correctly some proccesses.

I reinstalled Windows since I was disappointed because of this, but if you say there is a big chance it can be solved I happily put Linux back and send you pics of these process lines.

5

Well, my Idea would be the Following:

Be sure that Secure Boot and Fast Boot are disabled. If You want keep Windows, disabled Fast Start-Up in Windows, too.

Then use Rufus on Windows to create the Bootstick. And because Your BIOS is in UEFI Mode, choose in Rufus on the ''Partition Sheme'' Option GPT.

6

Hello,

I have the same error.
I use Zorin OS Pro and yesterday I had slow shutdown times and this morning when I turned it on the system simply froze.

I ran some queries using chatgpt and got some insights.

I have a lenovo ideapd 3 i7 12 generation laptop.

And apparently the problem from the logs analyzed was a freeze due to Wayland.

I changed it to Xorg to check if the same occurs.

Worth a review.

7

I checked in other posts and also with the help of ChatGPT which checked the system logs, the printer discovery service cups-browsed.service was giving an error.

sudo systemctl disable --now cups-browsed.service

So the steps adopted here were to leave Wayland and go to Xorg.
I have disabled the printer discovery service.

Let's Wait for news.

8

For this kind of freeze I would avoid changing too many random services at once. After the next forced reboot, check the previous boot logs first: journalctl -b -1 -p warning..alert and also look near the end of journalctl -b -1. That should show the last service or driver touched before the shutdown/reboot hang. If it is an HP firmware/power-management issue, BIOS update + disabling Fast Boot/Secure Boot for testing is a good first pass; if the log points at graphics/session shutdown, then testing Xorg vs Wayland makes sense. The photo of the last visible lines on shutdown would be more useful than guessing.

9

You are all right, without the exact description of the problem it's not easy to diagnose. So, tomorrow I will install Zorin then come back with more useful information.

10

I'm back! I think I found a solution to my problem, because my computer doesn't produce the described error since. What I have done with the HELP of AI:
(I copy-paste the answer)

Root Cause: A timing conflict (race condition) occurs between the Linux kernel and the HP Embedded Controller (firmware/ACPI). During shutdown, the fan speed control and Intel's virtualization features overlap in a way that prevents the motherboard from processing the final software-level shutdown command.

Step one: Turned off Intel Virtualization Technology

Step 2: Modify GRUB Configuration

" sudo sed -i 's/^GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=.*/GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="modprobe.blacklist=hp_wmi reboot=pci,force"/' /etc/default/grub "

  • Removing quiet splash: This disables the boot/shutdown logo, making hidden system messages and process logs (the green [ OK ] lines) visible.
  • modprobe.blacklist=hp_wmi: This completely disables HP's proprietary WMI kernel module, which tends to conflict with the cooling system controls during shutdown.
  • reboot=pci,force: It forces Linux to use the native Intel hardware line (via the PCI bus) to issue an immediate, clean hardware-level power-off or reset signal at the very last millisecond, completely bypassing the buggy HP ACPI firmware phase.
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