My old laptop suddenly doesn't sleep, shut down, or restart

[wet marten]

Hi there! I have an old HP laptop running on Linux Mint 22.2, and everything was fine until yesterday. My old laptop no longer sleeps, shuts down, or restarts. A day before I saw this issue, it took a few seconds longer to sleep and shut down.

What could have been the issue when it worked normally before? Could it be a kernel update? I found in the history of updates that the kernel was updated to version 6.8.0-84 from version 6.8.0-83 on September 24.

[blissful dune]

what exactly happens when you try to shut down?

[blissful dune]

for other people, we talked for a bit about this issue in https://discord.com/channels/628978428019736619/1421473053715595376 for some reason

[wet marten]

It is stuck at the wallpaper or logo screen

[blissful dune]

and it doesn't show any entries to select ?

[wet marten]

When I do suspend or sleep, it simply locks the screen after a few seconds

[blissful dune]

do you see an infinite loop of the mint logo spinning around ?

[wet marten]

And restart is also the same as shut down, but I saw the commands where it said Xorg process is preventing it from restart or shut down

[wet marten]

There is no infinite loop

[blissful dune]

oh do you mean your normal desktop wallpaper?

[wet marten]

I observed that none of the options like suspend, restart, and shut down work from yesterday

[wet marten]

It shows entries

[blissful dune]

and you see it fullscreen for a few seconds then your desktop interface comes back?

[wet marten]

Two days ago, after installing the 6.8.0-83 kernel, I noticed that it took a few additional seconds to enter sleep mode or even shut down. Usually, it happens immediately.

[wet marten]

Nope

I waited for almost 20 minutes, and it didn't shut down or enter suspend state

[blissful dune]

it was stuck on your wallpaper for 20 minutes ?

[wet marten]

I checked the journalctl, and it showed a conflict with the AMD driver ever since the new kernel was installed. I guess this issue was introduced in 6.8.0-84.

[wet marten]

Yes

I have an old HP laptop, and pressing ESC takes me to the BIOS menu. I pressed ESC twice after I saw the Mint logo. I saw the boot commands and not the GRUB menu or the command prompt.

I want to use the newer 6.14 kernel now, but the download stopped due to network errors

[blissful dune]

when you see the mint logo, it means grub already launched mint

[wet marten]

Oh

I think I have to change the timeout and menu appearance from hidden

[blissful dune]

wait i know what to do, i had the same issue on my laptop where I just recently installed mint

im gonna check what I changed

set GRUB_TIMEOUT to at least 3 and GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=menu

[wet marten]

Now, I'm able to download the newer 6.14 kernel

[blissful dune]

also can you tell me what is GRUB_DEFAULT ?

[wet marten]

I will try the newer 6.14 kernel. It seems it is better than the 6.8 version.

[wet marten]

0

[blissful dune]

ok that's fine then

6.14 introduces issues with virtualbox but aside from that, yes it is a good improvement in general

[wet marten]

Is it fine to force a shutdown after installing the 6.14 kernel? I'm not able to perform a normal restart.

[blissful dune]

i'm really not confident in that

[wet marten]

I heard it will also improve my USB wireless adapter performance

[blissful dune]

someone with more knowledge should help you with that, I'm not so much of an expert

[wet marten]

Will I have to change these settings to see the GRUB menu? It requires a restart once changed.

[blissful dune]

oh i almost forgot to tell you, do sudo update-grub before rebooting

so that your grub config modifications will be applied

[blissful dune]

yes, these 2 modifications are here to show you the grub menu at boot

[wet marten]

I have tried the newer 6.14 kernel, but the problem persists. I will try the older 6.8.0-83 kernel once.

[wet marten]

I almost bricked my laptop. After modifying the GRUB file, I forgot to run this command. Thankfully, after another boot and pressing the ESC key, I saw this menu. I finally ran this command when I booted with 6.8.0-83 in recovery mode. However, this time, the laptop could suspend but couldn't wake up.

I booted with the 6.8.0-83 kernel to check if it works. I have the same issue. None of the states work.

I could use this old laptop a little longer. I don't know why I suddenly have this issue. It could be with respect to the AMD driver from the error messages. Should I buy a new laptop and replace this one? I found a nice deal on an HP laptop with a Snapdragon X processor. However, the price has increased now.

[blissful dune]

Are you sure you need to press the ESC key to get the grub menu ? That's not normal, it should appear without any interaction needed from you

[lofty mesa]

Snapdragon is not a typical computer processor. It is ARM processor. Thus that would limit what OS you can put on it.

[lofty mesa]

if you modify the grub file, you must save it and do sudo update-grub at commandline after. It even tells you to do that in the file.

[wet marten]

Yes, that is true. I missed it the first time when I edited the file. I did it once I could recover by choosing an older kernel in recovery mode when the grub menu appeared after a second boot.

[wet marten]

I'm not sure because I forgot to run the command. I tried entering the ESC key after a second boot, and somehow, it worked. Now, it comes on its own with each boot.

[wet marten]

I bet it cannot run Linux Mint on it. But the laptop comes with Windows 11 Home.

I finally fixed the issue by disabling the AMD driver. I edited a line in the grub file for this. I can suspend, restart, and shut down normally now.

I reverted to the 6.8 kernel because 6.14 showed the mouse pointer lag. I think it is better to use the LTS kernel on older hardware.

I also reverted the grub file to the default hidden and zero timeout. Now, my laptop cannot work on the discrete AMD GPU. It runs on the onboard Intel HD 4000.