Unable to install any version of Linux
 

I hope someone can point me in the right direction, My problem is that whatever version of Linux I try to install it fails almost immediately. I have tried Mint 20 Cinnamon, Mint 20 Mate, MXLinux 19.3 A couple old versions I have laying around as well, Mint 17.1, Kbuntu 14.1, Etc.

The problem started with a CPU upgrade including an updated Bios necessitated by the CPU upgrade. So I suspect the Bios are causing some issue but I'm unsure how to proceed.

Before the CPU install I was dual booting Mint 17.1 and Windows 7pro with zero issues. As part of the upgrade I planned to install Mint 20 and upgrade to Windows 10. After I installed the CPU Grub started like normal and I could access Windows (with screen resolution reset to like 600x800) But I could not access Mint 17.1. I was able to successfully upgrade to Windows 10 and it works fine, Though Grub is still there at boot and is needed to get into Windows.

When selecting Linux it would Immediately go to black screen with a blinking cursor in upper left corner. Which is what I get when I try to start any version of Linux stated above from a burned DVD or a USB drive.

When I boot from a Linux DVD I get the menu of options like "Start Mint Linux", "Start in Compatibility Mode", "Memory Test" etc. If I select Memory Test that will work and function normally. If I select "Compatibility Mode" I do get 2 screens of output that progress from the first screen to the second by pressing any key but then it stalls. Though I don't see any overt error messages. I will attempt to attach the screen images to this thread.

The last line of output reads:[ 0.735988] PCI Interrupt Link [LNKC] enabled at IRQ 10

My system specs are;
Asus M4A89GTD-PRO/USB3 Motherboard Bios version 3029(Latest available 2012)
AMD FX-8150 CPU 8 core3.6GHZ X64
16GB DDR3 1600
WD 1TB SATA Platter drive(Windows 10)
Seagate 750GB SATA Platter drive(Linux Mint 17.1)
Nvidia GTX970 4GB (EVGA) (added in edit)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Old Radeons seem to be having trouble lately with recent kernels. First thing I would try is at the boot menu, be it Grub or otherwise, is to edit the line beginning with linu to append the string radeon.agpmode=-1. This may or may not have any effect. If that produces no apparent help, try editing that same line to instead remove any of the strings quiet and/or splash=silent. That should put some diagnostic messages on the screen and allow installation to proceed. If that's not enough, try repeating, but with one of the following also appended:

• noplymouth
• plymouth=0
• plymouth.enable=0

If that's still not enough, append additional one: nomodeset.

All those distros you named are Debian-based, which means behaviors shouldn't differ much among them. You might have better luck trying a non-Debian, such as CentOS, Mageia, Manjaro or openSUSE.

We probably need to know whether your partitioning is set up to use UEFI booting. It should be because of the presence of Windows 10, if that decade old motherboard design supports UEFI. I can't tell from its Asus web site whether it does or not. Windows and Linux on most UEFI PCs must be installed in the same mode, either legacy/BIOS, or UEFI. If the existing working installation is UEFI, then a new Linux installation must be made in UEFI mode. Not all installers are smart enough to determine that requirement without your help.

There are other bootloader linu line options that may be appropriate for getting installation to proceed, but none are coming to mind ATM.

Can you boot any operating system on that newly configured machine, live or installed?
It is quite possible that your installed OS cannot deal with the new configuration. Are you testing with live media? I.e. Linux .iso's "burned" to a USB stick, not installed?
When the graphical boot process stalls it is possible that you can see log messages on another tty, accessible with the Ctrl-Alt-Fn keycombo where n is a number between 1 and 12.

Sorry, I knew I would forget something. I am running an Nvidia GTX 970 video card not using the onboard video.

Also, the Bios do not support UEFI as far as I can tell.

@Fastidious

Apparently, this driver is required for your video card -- Linux X64 Display Driver 455.45

At startup, edit the kernel line by appending nomodeset to it (at line's end) prior to install.

See if this works.

Then, proprietary graphics driver may be installed to the system.

Reference this for How2
and this link

Ok, thank's. I will try that when I get home tonight.

Well I tried the nomodeset in the boot arguments and that did not help. I also tried the latest version of Manjaro KDE with the same result as the other distros.

Maybe saying I can't install Linux is inaccurate, None of the Live versions of the distros I have tried will boot. I get about 5-10 seconds of my CDROM drive's light flashing and then nothing, just black screen w/blinking cursor in upper LH corner of screen. Except Manjaro is just black screen no cursor. Keyboard doesn't respond to any input. I have also created a USB stick with Rufus with the same result.

Any other ideas?

I Read the posts a little more carefully and have turned off the no splash arguments and get this output from MXLinux;

https://i.imgur.com/TpUz0Fc.jpg

Not sure if messages refer to hard drive errors or hardware errors, but it appears no attempt at cleaning the hard drive prior to second and third attempts at installing an OS was done -- correct?

I'll defer to another more familiar with the code your image shows.

Did the BIOS update, return the motherboard to it's default setting.

If so, check that secure boot is switched off.

So your system isn't looking for the either the DVD or usb drive.

Thus check the boot order in the BIOS.

The boot order is correct and doing what it's supposed to. I can get to all the different distros menu screens, It's when I select "Start MXLinux" for example, from the burned discs menu that the system hangs.

I'm starting to think that the Linux kernel is expecting to get some info from the Bios about the CPU that it's either not getting or doesn't like. Windows works fine though so???

Will the Linux disks boot up in another machine?

Have you considered reinstalling the old CPU to install something? The messages in the image are serious, possibly caused by compatibility issues between CPU and motherboard or BIOS.

I'm not sure reinstalling the old CPU would be worth while. The system still has Linux Mint 17.1 installed and was working perfectly with the old CPU and won't boot with the new CPU.

I might try flashing the Bios with a different version. I'm on version 3029 and there is a beta version 3030 available. Might be worth trying.

It's just odd in that the Bios identifies the CPU correctly and so does Windows 10 which seems to work fine.:confused: