I built a new all-AMD PC and installed Linux Mint. The first installation booted normally, but after reinstalling Mint to clean up the drive, the computer often shows a black screen after reboot. The monitor briefly wakes and goes dark, but nothing appears, even after waiting 5–10 minutes. If I hold the power button until the system completely shuts down and then start it again, the boot menu appears and Mint starts normally. I also reflashed the motherboard BIOS, but that did not fix it. The system has a Ryzen 9 9900X, 32 GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR5-5600, a Sapphire RX 9060 XT, a 1 TB WD Black NVMe SSD, and an MSI MAG X670E Tomahawk WiFi motherboard. What could be causing the delayed or failed first boot, and how can I diagnose it?
3 Answers
Because a complete shutdown makes the next boot work, this could be a firmware or motherboard initialization problem rather than a normal Linux service delay. Check UEFI settings such as Fast Boot, CSM/Legacy mode, and the selected boot entry. Confirm that the NVMe drive is wiped and that Mint is installed in UEFI mode. It is also worth testing with one RAM module, reseating the GPU, and checking the motherboard’s debug LEDs for a component that is failing to initialize.
This may be a compatibility issue between the Mint release, its kernel, and the very recent GPU and CPU hardware. Make sure the installation media and system are fully updated, and test a newer kernel or a current distribution with better support for the RX 9060 XT. An older Mint kernel may boot unreliably or fail to initialize the display correctly on newer hardware.
If I need to change distributions, I may try Nobara or another current gaming-focused option, since I mainly want good hardware and graphics support.
Start by checking whether this is actually a slow service during Linux startup. Run `systemd-analyze blame` in a terminal, and also try `systemd-analyze critical-chain` to see what is blocking boot. If the problem happens before the boot menu appears, though, those commands will not identify it; that points more toward firmware, graphics initialization, or hardware detection.
I re-flashed the BIOS already, but I can check the UEFI boot settings and the board’s debug indicators next.