I was given a semi-broken Dell Inspiron 15 5000 (P58F). It had Windows on it but kept on crashing. I installed Mint on it after lots of failed attempts still crashed the odd time.
I noticed if I put it in “Power Saver” mode then it would never crash. So something to do with power delivery, too high boost, whatever.
Yesterday I tried to put it back to normal/unrestricted power mode and it crashed soon after and now it’s not booting into Mint at all.
So, how can I force power save mode before even booting into it?
I can see the Linux Mint logo but it stalls a few seconds after. I have access to Grub only. It’s just a test laptop, I don’t care much for it, just trying to skill up on debugging Linux issues rather than wiping all the time.
Since now it booted, you can edit /etc/default/grub, add those options after splash quiet, save, and sudo update-grub. Upon next boot it should work fine.
As for the original question, if there is no OS running, the only thing running is BIOS.
Ya, I might do that later. I’d like to figure out why it’s crashing on default params first. Since it was crashing on on Windows I would guess it’s a hardware issue. This laptop would not have been treated very well - was used by kids on beds with no airflow etc.
Ya already had BIOS updated to latest.
Already did full Dell BIOS system diagnostics - all fine.
Already did memtest86+ many times using different ways of doing it - all fine
I’ve cleaned out the laptop already - opened it up fully.
Not sure what drive settings I have but it works perfectly in Power Save mode, indicating it’s most likely not a drive issue, but I’ll check it out anyway.
I’ve to try repaste the CPU/GPU next I guess.
I’m certain this is not a Linux on Dell issue at all, pretty sure this is a hardware issue with the abuse the laptop probably got over the past years.
I had also previously done stress --cpu 8 --timeout 86400 and stress with built in stress tester in s-tui
On “Power Saver” power mode:
All core 0.9GHz, 54 deg C, no crashing.
On “Balanced” power mode:
Boosts to around 3.1GHz for about 5s close to 95 deg C and then
All core 2.4GHz, 80 deg C, no crashing.
On “Balanced” power mode - All core 2.4GHz, 80 deg C, no crashing.
Boosts to around 3.4GHz for about 5s close to 95 deg C and then
All core 2.4GHz, 80 deg C
Eventually get “segmentation fault (core dumped)” messages.
It’s pretty odd, seems like like “Performance” mode kills it, but in a way that it kind of locks up the CPU, even for other “Live Distro” from USB.
Like I’ve even got Ventoy stalling.
Once I recover, it all works fine again.
Seems to be related to segmentation fault (core dumped)
While doing the stress test in s-tui, if I leave power mode in “performance” and start/stop the stress test rapidly it will kill it.
To configure AHCI on an Inspiron 15, access the BIOS/UEFI settings, locate the SATA configuration, and change it from its default (usually IDE or RAID) to AHCI. After saving the changes, your computer should boot up normally with AHCI enabled.
Your disk drive is SATA, you can benchmark it with Disks
So I found the problem option in the BIOS, it was around the area I was thinking …
“Intel TurboBoost” disabled and the system boots right up.
If I check the logs I see this related log while booting into the OS just before it crashed while TurboBoost is enabled [OK] Started upower.service - Daemon for power management
TurboBoost can affect the CPU or GPU but since I’ve got an iGPU (see above) it’s the same overall chip.
Problem is, now it’s only running at 1.6GHz all core (the base clock)
I volunteer with a guy and we setup “old” laptops with Mint 22.1. Some are old Vista era laptops.
I have had to disable UEFI to install Mint, then I will enable it afterward. I like to use gparted to remove old partition, then I create an ext4 and format it. You can get to grparted while you are booted to USB or DVD. I created a bash script to install the software we want and enable the firewall. " it is NOT enable by default " I have less problems when I use gparted.
I’ve been helping for several years. I haven’t had touch power saver.