I'm using Windows 10 Pro and want to dual boot it with Linux as I plan to ditch Windows eventually. Unfortunately, I've run into issues during the installation process of various Linux distros. I've tried Pop!_OS, Fedora Rawhide, and Ubuntu Quokka, but they either freeze during installation or fail to boot properly after installation. I am installing from an ISO on a USB drive and my system has the following specs: AMD 9800X3D CPU, Gigabyte Gaming X AX v2 motherboard, an RX 7900 XTX GPU, and 32GB of RAM, with two 2TB M.2 drives—one for Windows and one intended for Linux. I attempted some boot parameters to resolve the freezes suggested by ChatGPT, but so far, nothing has worked. Could anyone offer some advice or troubleshooting tips? Thanks!
2 Answers
First things first, have you disabled Secure Boot in the BIOS? It can often block installation of other operating systems. Also, check if there's an option to disable integrated graphics, as that might cause conflicts. If you can, look for any error messages when it freezes; some distros keep installation logs that can help debug this.
Try pressing 'Esc' at the boot menu to stop the autopilot mode, then press 'e' to edit the grub command. Find the line with 'GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=' and remove 'quiet splash'. This should show you what's happening during the freeze. Also, running memtest86 could help look for any RAM issues since that has caused freezes for me in the past before.
Great point about memtest! It's surprising how many issues can arise from bad RAM. Make sure to run that test. Also, checking if there's a newer BIOS update available could resolve some compatibility problems.