The hardware is about 15 months old.
When I booted up in live mode the inxi -Fxz > /tmp/inxi.txt command just moved the cursor to the next line in the terminal and sat there blinking. No output file. Then tried just inxi -Fxz. Same result: no output on the screen.
So, I booted up in the recovery mode as described in the initial post. Running inxi -Fxz produced the following output:
System: Host: saba-sager Kernel: 4.15.0-20-generic x86_64 bits: 64 gcc: 7.3.0
Desktop: Cinnamon 3.8.8 (Gtk 3.22.30-1ubuntu1) Distro: Linux Mint 19 Tara
Machine: Device: laptop System: Notebook product: N85_N87 HJ HJ1 HK1 serial: N/A
Mobo: Notebook model: N85_N87 HJ HJ1 HK1 serial: N/A
UEFI [Legacy]: American Megatrends v: 1.05.09bRLS1 date: 03/14/2017
Battery BAT0: charge: 58.3 Wh 100.0% condition: 58.3/62.1 Wh (94%) model: Notebook BAT status: Full
CPU: Quad core Intel Core i7-7700HQ (-MT-MCP-) arch: Skylake rev.9 cache: 6144 KB
flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx) bmips: 22464
clock speeds: max: 3800 MHz 1: 3772 MHz 2: 3408 MHz 3: 3585 MHz 4: 3404 MHz 5: 3477 MHz 6: 3408 MHz
7: 3534 MHz 8: 3404 MHz
Graphics: Card-1: Intel Device 591b bus-ID: 00:02.0
Card-2: NVIDIA GP107M [GeForce GTX 1050 Mobile] bus-ID: 01:00.0
Display Server: x11 (X.Org 1.19.6 ) drivers: vesa (unloaded: modesetting,fbdev)
Resolution: 1920x1080@0.00hz
OpenGL: renderer: llvmpipe (LLVM 6.0, 256 bits) version: 3.3 Mesa 18.0.0-rc5 Direct Render: Yes
Audio: Card Intel CM238 HD Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:1f.3
Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.15.0-20-generic
Network: Card-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller
driver: r8169 v: 2.3LK-NAPI port: d000 bus-ID: 03:00.1
IF: enp3s0f1 state: down mac: <filter>
Card-2: Intel Device 24fb driver: iwlwifi bus-ID: 04:00.0
IF: wlp4s0 state: up speed: N/A duplex: N/A mac: <filter>
Drives: HDD Total Size: 320.1GB (2.6% used)
ID-1: /dev/sda model: Hitachi_HTS54503 size: 320.1GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 293G used: 7.9G (3%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1
RAID: No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present
Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 85.0C mobo: N/A
Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info: Processes: 221 Uptime: 15 min Memory: 1115.6/7862.5MB Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: 7.3.0
Client: Shell (bash 4.4.191) inxi: 2.3.56
I also noticed that when I booted up in live mode that the following messages appeared briefly on the screen before grub came up:
[0.000000] [Firmware Bug]: TSC_DEADLINE disabled due to Errata: please update microcode to version: 0x52 (orlater)
[0.000000] Error: [_UPC] namespace lookup failure. AE_ALREADY_EXISTS (2
0170031/dsvload-370)
[0.000000] ACPI Exception: AE_ALREADY_EXISTS, During name lookup/catalog (20
170031/psobject-252)
[0.000000] ACPI Exception: AE_ALREADY_EXISTS, (SSDT:xh_rvp11) while loading
table (28170031/tbxfload-220)
[0.000000] ACPI ERROR: 1 table load failures, 9 successful (28170031/tbxfloa
d-246)
I searched on the first error message and found a posting at
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/...-due-to-errata that advised running:
sudo apt-get install intel-microcode
which I tried without any notable success.
Thank you much for your interest in this issue.