[SOLVED] (Laptop AMD) unusable blank screen after boot

Big Scorpio · 2026-08-15 19:09:54

Hello Arch Friends,

After my Arch (CachyOS) boots past Grub, I see the 2 lines about Cachyos-lts being initialized and what should come after is either the initialization text with the [LOADED] things OR the splash screen but at that moment my display goes black completely. The only keyboard inputs it reacts to is CTRL+ALT+DEL. CTRL+ALT+F{1-4} does nothing. I can toggle numpad however.

I decided to try CachyOS (an Arch Linux derivative) and i installed it through pacstrap (not the built-in installer because i require LVM on LUKS FDE and calamaris is useless for that) and specified the cachyos kernel in the installation steps. I also installed the mesa and vulkan drivers for my AMD GPU.

I can arch-chroot into it through CachyOS live-usb with a working KDE Plasma DE, which works but only if I boot into it not in normal mode but in grub2 mode (???).

[root@CachyOS tempp]# lspci -k | grep -A 2 -i vga
05:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Renoir [Radeon Vega Series / Radeon Vega Mobile Series] (rev c2)
        DeviceName: Onboard IGD

I installed the AMD drivers as far as i can tell.

[root@CachyOS tempp]# pacman -Q mesa vulkan-radeon
mesa 1:26.1.7-1
vulkan-radeon 1:26.1.7-1
[root@CachyOS tempp]# pacman -Q wayland sddm plasma-desktop
wayland 1.26.0-1
sddm 0.21.0-7
plasma-desktop 6.7.4-1
[root@CachyOS tempp]# 
[root@CachyOS tempp]# pacman -Q | grep achy
cachyos-keyring 20240331-1
cachyos-mirrorlist 27-1
linux-cachyos 7.1.6-1
linux-cachyos-headers 7.1.6-1
linux-cachyos-lts 6.18.42-1

I tried some grub kernel parameters and a mkinitcpio config change but neither had any different effect on my issue.

### /etc/default/grub
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="loglevel=3 quiet cryptdevice=UUID=9a7110f5-fead-b5a1-8ac1-514ef2dd2a32:cryptroot amdgpu.dc=1 amdgpu.sg_display=0 amdgpu.gpu_recovery=1 pci=noaer"

### mkinitcpio.conf
MODULES=(f2fs amdgpu)
HOOKS=(base udev systemd autodetect microcode modconf block kms keyboard keymap consolefont encrypt lvm2 sd-vconsole block filesystems fsck)

I don't get it. Was it a mistake to install CachyOS through pacstrap (and then follow the Arch guides) or what? It's not like the laptop is a useless piece of scrap metal but it sure doesn't act all that friendly towards Linux as with the other several machines I had previously.

It uses an AMD Ryzen 7 4700U with integrated GPU (Zen 2, Revoir)

Journalctl -> https://pastes.io/75t79ZwP

According to an AI LLM, my system has working drivers but it fails to detect my display at the VBIOS level and it recommends me to fall back to software rendering to see if it works (?).

What am i missing?

Last edited by Big Scorpio (Yesterday 15:59:50)

seth · 2026-08-15 19:52:02

After my Arch (CachyOS)

https://bbs.archlinux.org/misc.php?action=rules
CachyOS is not your Arch but your CachyOS

https://pastes.io/75t79ZwP wrote:

{"message":"Raw access is restricted to paid users"}

1st link below - don't use shitty pastebin scams.

Aug 15 20:15:18 CachyOS kernel: caller [REDACTED LIKELY SECRET] [amdgpu] mapping multiple BARs
Aug 15 20:15:55 CachyOS systemd[1]: Started dbus-:[REDACTED EMAIL].

lol

This here is your problem:

Aug 15 20:15:18 CachyOS kernel: amdgpu 0000:05:00.0: Invalid PCI ROM header signature: expecting 0xaa55, got 0xffff
Aug 15 20:15:18 CachyOS kernel: amdgpu 0000:05:00.0: Unable to locate a BIOS ROM
Aug 15 20:15:18 CachyOS kernel: amdgpu 0000:05:00.0: Fatal error during GPU init
Aug 15 20:15:18 CachyOS kernel: amdgpu 0000:05:00.0: finishing device.
Aug 15 20:15:18 CachyOS kernel: amdgpu 0000:05:00.0: MODE2 reset
Aug 15 20:15:18 CachyOS systemd[1]: Starting Enable Persistent Storage in systemd-networkd...
Aug 15 20:15:18 CachyOS kernel: amdgpu 0000:05:00.0: asic reset on amdgpu_device_ip_fini_early failed
Aug 15 20:15:18 CachyOS kernel: amdgpu 0000:05:00.0: probe with driver amdgpu failed with error -22

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 1#p1790611 was because the system is in legacy BIOS mode.
You can probably boot "nomodeset" - but w/o GPU hardware acceleration.

Edit: also https://forum.endeavouros.com/t/solved- … l/41991/19 but on the other hand https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 1#p2039171

Last edited by seth (2026-08-15 19:54:02)

Big Scorpio · Yesterday 16:14:16

Thanks seth, that did it*^1. BIOS was set to legacy mode. I disabled the legacy mode in the BIOS and can at least see the boot logs.

Am i interpreting it right, that if I boot with the linux-cachyos(-lts) kernel, then I may not ask here for assistance? For all I am aware of, the installation I did followed the same Arch install path but with the kernel swapped out for what's running under CachyOS.

seth wrote:

https://pastes.io/75t79ZwP wrote:
{"message":"Raw access is restricted to paid users"}
1st link below - don't use shitty pastebin scams.

That is infuriating. I really need to keep a whitelist of properly working pastebin services.

*^1 Now i encounter another problem, that is outside the scope here - (partial, not full) disk encryption LVM on LUKS (LUKS on the partition, LVM on top of LUKS) is working but it doesn't boot into the login screen and I suspect it's a misconfigured /etc/fstab file. The Linux fatigue is real.

Last edited by Big Scorpio (Yesterday 16:25:22)

Lone_Wolf · Yesterday 17:15:27

Big Scorpio wrote:

Am i interpreting it right, that if I boot with the linux-cachyos(-lts) kernel, then I may not ask here for assistance?

It depends, if you just run their kernel but everything else is from archlinux repos, the system would be comparable to that of someone using archlinux with a custom kernel.

Please post your /etc/pacman.conf .

5hridhyan · Yesterday 17:51:17

This might not be related to the specific thread and might get binned; I respect whatever you see fit.
So this actually makes me wonder... does Arch as a sole distro have a separate identity, or is it simply a matter of which repository pacman says the packages came from?

Lone_Wolf wrote:

Please post your /etc/pacman.conf .

One could technically trim it down to just core, extra, and multilib and post it as output, and nobody would ever know the difference.

No, no, no one should use this to evade the one forum rule :cry:

Last edited by 5hridhyan (Yesterday 18:12:01)

seth · Yesterday 18:17:59

After my Arch (CachyOS)

and your hostname is "CachyOS" - there was and is no indication that it's just the kernel and I'll spare Lone_Wolf the effort and to answer 5hridhynan

Aug 15 20:15:31 fuck systemd[1]: cachyos-iw-set-regdomain.service: Deactivated successfully.
Aug 15 20:15:32 CachyOS pacman-key[1210]: ==> Appending keys from archlinux.gpg...
Aug 15 20:15:35 CachyOS pacman-key[1210]: ==> Appending keys from cachyos.gpg...
Aug 15 20:15:56 CachyOS cachyos-hello[1757]: 2026-08-15T18:15:56.207249Z ERROR i18n_embed::requester: Unable to parse your locale: ParserError(InvalidLanguage)
Aug 15 20:16:19 fuck systemd[1241]: app-cachyos\[REDACTED EMAIL]: Consumed 2.032s CPU time over 23.758s wall clock time, 89.4M memory peak.

You can try to lie but the problem is that you'll get caught and as far as I'm *personally* concerned: as long as you're honest I'll point you towards the rules but still try to address your problem.
If I catch you lying, you'll be in requirement for Anubis' services soon. Google it.

5hridhyan · Yesterday 18:30:16

nobody would ever know the difference.

I'd actually take it back,

seth wrote:

You can try to lie but the problem is that you'll get caught

Indeed you'd get caught, but if I understood the assignment correctly, the rules were actually meant to "reduce" support burden and wasted time, right?

If I catch you lying, you'll be in requirement for Anubis' services soon

Sir, Namaste :foldedhands:

Last edited by 5hridhyan (Yesterday 18:39:52)

seth · Yesterday 19:11:59

if I understood the assignment correctly, the rules were actually meant to "reduce" support burden and wasted time

They clarify that non-archers don't get to exploit the arch community as resource and to some extent that might reduce support "burden" but
1. that's based on the fiction of general adherence
2. If I want to reduce any burden I just come here and watch some po… cat videos instead, nobody here's paid for or obliged to any of this
3. the most effort is usually to read the post, once you've gone through that effort you can also just provide a solution and point out the abuse - cause then you didn't just waste your time reading the post.

Sir, Namaste

No praising

Lone_Wolf · Today 10:24:58

There is no clear rule that defines what is needed to be considered an archlinux installation.

Having official repos from another distro in /etc/pacman.conf is almost always reason enough to not see it as an archlinux installation .
Using linux-cachyos-lts from AUR or an unofficial user repository may be frowned upon but shouldn't lead to dustbinning.

Moderator Note
@Big Scorpio : sorry, but the info you gave makes clear your setup on aug 15 does not qualify as an archlinux installation .
I'm closing this thread but won't dustbin it so it will stay visible for everyone.

Arch Linux

#1 2026-08-15 19:09:54

[SOLVED] (Laptop AMD) unusable blank screen after boot

#2 2026-08-15 19:52:02

Re: [SOLVED] (Laptop AMD) unusable blank screen after boot

#3 Yesterday 16:14:16

Re: [SOLVED] (Laptop AMD) unusable blank screen after boot

#4 Yesterday 17:15:27

Re: [SOLVED] (Laptop AMD) unusable blank screen after boot

#5 Yesterday 17:51:17

Re: [SOLVED] (Laptop AMD) unusable blank screen after boot

#6 Yesterday 18:17:59

Re: [SOLVED] (Laptop AMD) unusable blank screen after boot

#7 Yesterday 18:30:16

Re: [SOLVED] (Laptop AMD) unusable blank screen after boot

#8 Yesterday 19:11:59

Re: [SOLVED] (Laptop AMD) unusable blank screen after boot

#9 Today 10:24:58

Re: [SOLVED] (Laptop AMD) unusable blank screen after boot

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