I've been struggling with my five-year-old HP OMEN laptop that has a Ryzen 7 4800h CPU and a GeForce GTX 1660 Ti GPU. It crashes regardless of the distribution I try. Initially, I ran memtest and it indicated that my hardware is in great shape, but now I'm at a loss. The crashes occur in both Windows (where I get blue screens) and Linux (which shows artifact crashes), often after hibernation or sometimes right after boot. I'm considering trying XFCE with Cachy or Debian. What other tests can I perform to diagnose the issue? Would switching to a more stable distro using X11 help?
2 Answers
You're on the right track but changing distros alone won’t help if the hardware is faulty. Keep an eye out for any physical damage inside the laptop. If everything looks good, you might need to look for hardware tests or diagnostics that could help pinpoint the issue.
It sounds like your GPU might be failing. If it’s crashing on both Windows and Linux, distro-hopping isn't likely to solve the issue. You might need to consider replacing the GPU if that's feasible.
I checked inside and didn't see anything obvious. What other tests could I run to find out where the problem lies?