Dell 7280 with fresh install hangs when disconnected from thunderbolt dock

General system Newbie
1

Hi There!

I’ve decided to give endevour a try, and installed it on my work Dell 7280.
Everything went well, and was working well, until the first time i connected my StarTech Thunderbolt dock.
Since then, every time i unplug, and anytime my laptop is unplugged it hangs pretty much right after booting.

I’m pretty lost here, and dont know even where to start…
by some advice, i’ve looked at the jorunalctl logs when it happens, and nothing jumps out.

Any help will be appreciated

1 Like
2

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Laptop/Dell

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Thunderbolt

can you check dmesg | grep firmware
or more speaky: journalctl -b -0 | grep firmware

3

You can try disabling c-states in the Bios. It may or may not work.

BIOS > Performance > C-States Control > uncheck the box > Apply > exit

Possible firmware update for the dock?

4

I ended up downgrading my kernel to the LTS one, and this stopped happening altogether.

Thanks for all the advice!

5

Could you tell me what BIOS setting you used to get it to boot into the installer. I am having a lot of trouble with this.

6

That person has not logged in to the forum in four years. :eyes:

Are you having trouble getting the live ISO USB recognized as a bootable disk? It may be necessary to trigger the boot menu instead of the BIOS menu (usually a different F-key at boot). Sometimes the BIOS will have a boot menu inside it where you can rearrange the order of boot options, but on some firmwares they are separate options.

Check that fastboot and secure boot are disabled. If your firmware supports UEFI then set UEFI only if possible (disable CSM). Set the SATA controller to AHCI mode. Try a different method for flashing the USB (dd, Ventoy, etc). If you have one, try a different USB stick altogether.

7

Hi @BluishHumility thanks a lot for all your suggestions.

I can trigger the boot menu using F12, the BIOS is triggered using F2.

I have fastboot and secureboot disabled. I have tried different USB sticks (some I actually bought, Sandisk, including a USB-C one). I always flash using disks using “restore partition”. I’ve never had a problem with this. The USB sticks work on my other (more recent Latitude 7420).

It does support UEFI. I read about setting SATA to AHCI a few days ago, and did try this. I will try again.

EDIT: this is the same with any distro except Ubuntu for some reason. Fedora would be a huge improvement already, but would love to have EOS as per.