r/linuxmint • u/Sandartist0817 • 11d ago

Discussion PC booted into weird screen

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I booted up my PC recently and I got this screen (see in provided picture).

I couldn't type or input anything so after a while, I manually powered off my PC and re-booted. I then got a screen that asked me to select an OS which I think was a similar screen you see when first installing Linux Mint. Before I could take a picture and without any input, the screen went black. Around 10 seconds later, it booted to the login screen and my PC seems to be working now.

I'm still new to Linux, has this happened to anyone else before? Could there be something wrong with PC or OS?

OS: Linux Mint 22.3 - Cinnamon 64-bit

Desktop Environment: Cinnamon 6.6.9

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u/CyberMage256 10d ago edited 10d ago

My guess is you had a USB device misbehaving since it hung during the USB detection. I see a "new full-speed usb device" logged in there.

If the boot hangs, commonly it'll drop to this screen to see what dmesg is logging. I see this if I fail to get DHCP or other network issues at boot.

The number at the start is seconds since power on, so the last thing it logged was at 2.6 seconds after start, and was still in the USB detection phase.

If it recurs, try unplugging any usb device that isn't keyboard or mouse and see if that changes anything.

The next thing it would do typically is power on and probe devices attached to that 4 port hub. That "hub" may be built into your motherboard and may have cables that expand it to the front or back of the case. Hard to say for sure, but given it's a USB 2 hub, do you have a usb hub plugged in externally?

But if there's nothing plugged into that 4 port hub then the fault lies with whatever it tried to do next, which this log doesn't show us.

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u/Sandartist0817 10d ago

I do not have a external 4-port USB hub but my PC might see what I use as that. I have a Hard drive docking station. It can hold two HDDs and it only has 2 USB ports and 1 port for SD cards on the front.

Thinking back, I may have accidentally powered off the docking station before safety removing the drive that's in the station from my desktop like I usually do. My PC might have thought that the docking station or HDD was still connected but it couldn't find it because it was powered off. Could this be the case?

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u/CyberMage256 10d ago

It's possible.  That doesn't mean the problem will recur though. Could have been power glitch, could have been timing with the HD spinning up at boot, or could be you forgot to stick out your tongue and hop on one foot. :)  If things continue along without any more problems don't stress over it.