8 month old untouched Manjaro updated with -Syyu boots to black screen, possibly nVidia issue
by shuv1t from LinuxQuestions.org on (#5DBHH)
This is going to be a rather long story but I feel like all of this needs to be told for anyone interested in helping to get the whole picture.
I had to ditch my Manjaro for Win10 the last 8 or so months because of a hardware bug in my CPU causing crashes (but working fine in Windows). Now with a new CPU I again selected Manjaro from my dual boot menu and it loaded just fine. However after forcing a full update and restarting it just boots into a black screen. Keyboard and mouse are active so I assume it's just the nVidia drivers that borked it. However for some reason this boot makes it so POST skips any ability to enter bios from a USB keyboard. I tried mashing ESC and CAPS after reading about GRUB boot menu, but this also did nothing. I then went and bought a USB to PS2 adapter to plug my keyboard into the PS2 slot but this failed as the keyboard wouldn't work. I tried resetting the BIOS by shorting the jumper. This "failed" 4 times with different shorting tools, 2 different screwdrivers, a micro usb plug and another metallic tool. After each time doing this the PC seemed to post loop about 3 times until returning to the black screen - it simply wouldn't go into BIOS.
I physically disconnected the SSD with the manjaro partition and I was now able to boot into windows. Windows is sitting on a nvme disk. From there I managed to use Recovery -> Advanced Startup -> UEFI Firmware Settings which got me into BIOS. I noticed that the XMP profile had been disabled so it seemed like my BIOS reset at least had done something. After re-enabling my XMP profile and changing the boot priority to USB before HD I saved and exited. I still couldn't enter BIOS through keyboard (DEL) when booting to Windows. I tried booting to a Windows Installation USB and when I did the BIOS post screen appeared and I could enter it. Windows "Turn on fast startup" isn't enabled so this shouldn't be the reason I can't get into BIOS from booting.
I'm quite confused about what's going on but I assume it's got something to do with the boot sector on the Manjaro SSD overriding everything and just trying to boot into Manjaro. My motherboard (MSI B550 Mortar Wifi) with latest BIOS is also doing something weird skipping any USB detection on post. I couldn't find any setting for this in BIOS when I got into it earlier.
So, now that everything I've experienced and tried have been explained here is what I'm seeking help to do:
I'd like to keep the files on the SSD that has the Manjaro partition, and install a working version of Manjaro. I have plenty of other SSDs/nvmes that I can use for a new install. My first thought is to install Manjaro on a different partition and then hotswap the SSD and mount it, then transfer the files I want from it - and just format the thing before rebooting. Alternatively I could delete just the boot on this drive so I can boot with it connected without the boot trying to get me into the not working OS. I'm not entirely sure how I would do this.
All of this is moot if I can't get my graphics adapter to work. I'm perfectly fine with using a non-free version of the nVidia driver. The GPU is a RTX 2070 with PCI ID 1F07. How do I go about installing Manjaro + this graphics driver so I don't end up in the boot to black screen hell I experienced earlier? Do I just grab the latest .run bundle from nVidia and put it on the Manjaro USB?
I had to ditch my Manjaro for Win10 the last 8 or so months because of a hardware bug in my CPU causing crashes (but working fine in Windows). Now with a new CPU I again selected Manjaro from my dual boot menu and it loaded just fine. However after forcing a full update and restarting it just boots into a black screen. Keyboard and mouse are active so I assume it's just the nVidia drivers that borked it. However for some reason this boot makes it so POST skips any ability to enter bios from a USB keyboard. I tried mashing ESC and CAPS after reading about GRUB boot menu, but this also did nothing. I then went and bought a USB to PS2 adapter to plug my keyboard into the PS2 slot but this failed as the keyboard wouldn't work. I tried resetting the BIOS by shorting the jumper. This "failed" 4 times with different shorting tools, 2 different screwdrivers, a micro usb plug and another metallic tool. After each time doing this the PC seemed to post loop about 3 times until returning to the black screen - it simply wouldn't go into BIOS.
I physically disconnected the SSD with the manjaro partition and I was now able to boot into windows. Windows is sitting on a nvme disk. From there I managed to use Recovery -> Advanced Startup -> UEFI Firmware Settings which got me into BIOS. I noticed that the XMP profile had been disabled so it seemed like my BIOS reset at least had done something. After re-enabling my XMP profile and changing the boot priority to USB before HD I saved and exited. I still couldn't enter BIOS through keyboard (DEL) when booting to Windows. I tried booting to a Windows Installation USB and when I did the BIOS post screen appeared and I could enter it. Windows "Turn on fast startup" isn't enabled so this shouldn't be the reason I can't get into BIOS from booting.
I'm quite confused about what's going on but I assume it's got something to do with the boot sector on the Manjaro SSD overriding everything and just trying to boot into Manjaro. My motherboard (MSI B550 Mortar Wifi) with latest BIOS is also doing something weird skipping any USB detection on post. I couldn't find any setting for this in BIOS when I got into it earlier.
So, now that everything I've experienced and tried have been explained here is what I'm seeking help to do:
I'd like to keep the files on the SSD that has the Manjaro partition, and install a working version of Manjaro. I have plenty of other SSDs/nvmes that I can use for a new install. My first thought is to install Manjaro on a different partition and then hotswap the SSD and mount it, then transfer the files I want from it - and just format the thing before rebooting. Alternatively I could delete just the boot on this drive so I can boot with it connected without the boot trying to get me into the not working OS. I'm not entirely sure how I would do this.
All of this is moot if I can't get my graphics adapter to work. I'm perfectly fine with using a non-free version of the nVidia driver. The GPU is a RTX 2070 with PCI ID 1F07. How do I go about installing Manjaro + this graphics driver so I don't end up in the boot to black screen hell I experienced earlier? Do I just grab the latest .run bundle from nVidia and put it on the Manjaro USB?