[SOLVED, I think] menu is blank

[The_Mystic]

I recently replaced my laptop, and installed Mint 20.3 MATE on it. Everything went smoothly; but on the first boot, I opened the menu to discover it was empty. All the applications installed, but I can't access them from the menu, because none of the icons are showing up (see photo).

My laptop is a new-out-of-box HP Pavilion 15-ec2121nr. The only hardware modification I did was add a 2.5" SSD; Mint installed on the M.2 SSD that came with the laptop, but wouldn't boot...

I've been using Mint for years now (since circa 2016) with little to no trouble; but diagnosing this is a bit beyond my knowledge, to say nothing of fixing it.

[Jo-con-Ël]

I looks like a problem with graphics (low performance). You can try to open and command line (Alt+F2) and run marco --replace or click on Menu>Control Center>Desktop settings>Windows to try marco or metacity with or w/o compositor by now.

In any case try to open a terminal (Alt+Ctrl+T) and run inxi -Fxxxzr then post back result as indicated here.

If Ryzen, after installing all pending updates, most probably you will need to install a newer kernel (Click on Update manager icon on panel>View>Linux kernel> click on 5.13 on the left and choose the last kernel on the right>Install and reboot when done).

[The_Mystic]

In Desktop settings>Windows, I tried marco and metacity with/without compositing, and with/without compton; then I also tried compiz. None of these fixed the issue.

I was running kernel 5.4.0-110; I upgraded it to 5.13.0, and rebooted. Then I ran updates again, and re-rebooted for good measure; I'm now running kernel 5.13.0-41. There's no change in the menu behavior, though I can now connect to wifi on my laptop (I was using a dongle earlier).

Also, I forgot to mention earlier that when I try to search in the menu, nothing is found. I've attached a screenshot of what happened when I started searching for "calculator."

Here's the result from inxi -Fxxxzr:

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System:
  Kernel: 5.13.0-41-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: N/A 
  Desktop: MATE 1.26.0 info: mate-panel wm: marco 1.26.0 dm: LightDM 1.30.0 
  Distro: Linux Mint 20.3 Una base: Ubuntu 20.04 focal 
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: HP product: HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 15-ec2xxx 
  v: N/A serial: <filter> Chassis: type: 10 serial: <filter> 
  Mobo: HP model: 88DD v: 96.31 serial: <filter> UEFI: AMI v: F.16 
  date: 11/15/2021 
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 48.4 Wh condition: 48.7/48.7 Wh (100%) volts: 13.0/11.6 
  model: HP Primary type: Li-ion serial: <filter> status: Unknown 
  Device-1: hidpp_battery_2 model: Logitech Wireless Mouse M325 
  serial: <filter> charge: 55% (should be ignored) rechargeable: yes 
  status: Discharging 
CPU:
  Topology: 6-Core model: AMD Ryzen 5 5600H with Radeon Graphics bits: 64 
  type: MT MCP arch: Zen 3 L2 cache: 3072 KiB 
  flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm 
  bogomips: 79052 
  Speed: 1178 MHz min/max: 1200/4280 MHz boost: enabled Core speeds (MHz): 
  1: 1293 2: 1287 3: 1297 4: 1297 5: 1297 6: 1296 7: 1297 8: 1297 9: 1286 
  10: 1135 11: 1297 12: 1297 
Graphics:
  Device-1: NVIDIA vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: nvidia v: 470.129.06 
  bus ID: 01:00.0 chip ID: 10de:1f99 
  Device-2: AMD vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: amdgpu v: kernel 
  bus ID: 05:00.0 chip ID: 1002:1638 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.13 driver: amdgpu,ati,nvidia 
  unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,nouveau,vesa compositor: marco v: 1.26.0 
  resolution: 1920x1080~144Hz 
  OpenGL: renderer: AMD RENOIR (DRM 3.41.0 5.13.0-41-generic LLVM 12.0.0) 
  v: 4.6 Mesa 21.2.6 direct render: Yes 
Audio:
  Device-1: NVIDIA vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel 
  bus ID: 01:00.1 chip ID: 10de:10fa 
  Device-2: AMD Raven/Raven2/FireFlight/Renoir Audio Processor 
  vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: N/A bus ID: 05:00.5 chip ID: 1022:15e2 
  Device-3: AMD Family 17h HD Audio vendor: Hewlett-Packard 
  driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 05:00.6 chip ID: 1022:15e3 
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.13.0-41-generic 
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet 
  vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: r8169 v: kernel port: e000 bus ID: 02:00.0 
  chip ID: 10ec:8168 
  IF: eno1 state: down mac: <filter> 
  Device-2: Realtek vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: rtw89_pci v: kernel 
  port: d000 bus ID: 03:00.0 chip ID: 10ec:8852 
  IF: wlo1 state: up mac: <filter> 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 1.38 TiB used: 13.50 GiB (1.0%) 
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Micron model: MTFDHBA512QFD-1AX1AABHA 
  size: 476.94 GiB speed: 31.6 Gb/s lanes: 4 serial: <filter> rev: HPS1022 
  scheme: GPT 
  ID-2: /dev/sda vendor: Crucial model: CT1000MX500SSD1 size: 931.51 GiB 
  speed: 6.0 Gb/s serial: <filter> rev: 023 scheme: GPT 
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 817.37 GiB used: 13.50 GiB (1.7%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda3 
  ID-2: swap-1 size: 100.00 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda1 
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 46.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: amdgpu temp: 46 C 
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Repos:
  No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list 
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list 
  1: deb http://packages.linuxmint.com una main upstream import backport #id:linuxmint_main
  2: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal main restricted universe multiverse
  3: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates main restricted universe multiverse
  4: deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-backports main restricted universe multiverse
  5: deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-security main restricted universe multiverse
  6: deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/ focal partner
  Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/openscad-releases-focal.list 
  1: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/openscad/releases/ubuntu focal main
Info:
  Processes: 287 Uptime: 6m Memory: 7.12 GiB used: 1.37 GiB (19.2%) 
  Init: systemd v: 245 runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 9.4.0 alt: 9 Shell: bash 
  v: 5.0.17 running in: mate-terminal inxi: 3.0.38

[DOGGO_Woo]

Also, I forgot to mention earlier that when I try to search in the menu, nothing is found. I've attached a screenshot of what happened when I started searching for "calculator."

Did you run the integrity checks on the linux mint ISO you installed from? Perhaps the iso got corrupted while being downloaded.

[The_Mystic]

Did you run the integrity checks on the linux mint ISO you installed from? Perhaps the iso got corrupted while being downloaded.

Twice. Once was before I installed Mint. Then when the menu went funny after the install, I redownloaded the ISO and checked again before reinstalling. Both times, the downloads were done as torrents via Transmission. Each time, I ran the following in Terminal. The ISO passed both times.

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sha256sum Downloads/linuxmint-20.3-mate-64bit.iso |grep 27de0b1e6d743d0efc2c193ec88d56a49941ce3e7d58b03730a4bb1895c25be5

[kato181]

Try this in terminal and see what happens..

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gsettings reset-recursively org.mate.pane

[The_Mystic]

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gsettings reset-recursively org.mate.pane

No luck. This was the only output from that command:

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No such schema “org.mate.pane”

[kato181]

Thanks mate I didn't notice that typo...old age is a creepin' up!!

[Jo-con-Ël]

There is a typo on codes, it is org.mate.panel.

Did you try reinstalling mintmenu? If you didn't do it now and post back results (sudo apt-get install --reinstall mintmenu)

[The_Mystic]

I just now tried gsettings reset-recursively org.mate.panel and sudo apt-get install --reinstall mintmenu, rebooting after each command. No change.

EDIT:
Also, I started to pay closer attention to the boot process. I keep getting some errors, so I took a photo. I know it's a bit fuzzy, so I tried to type it out below as best I can:

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[    0.237571] ACPI BIOS Error (bug): Could not resolve symbol [\.SB.PCIO.GPP1.WLAN], AE_NOT_FOUND (20210331/dswload2-162)
[    0.237584] ACPI Error: AE_NOT_FOUND, During name lookup/catalog (20210331/psobject-220)
[    0.237967] ACPI BIOS Error (bug): Failure creating named object [\.SB.PCIO.GPP0.VGA1], AE_ALREADY_EXISTS (20210331/dswload2-326)
[    0.237971] ACPI Error: AE_ALREADY_EXISTS, During name lookup/catalog (20210331/psobject-220)
[    0.237973] ACPI BIOS Error (bug): Failure creating named object [\.SB.PCIO.GPP0.HDAU], AE_ALREADY_EXISTS (20210331/dswload2-326)
[    0.237978] ACPI Error: AE_ALREADY_EXISTS, During name lookup/catalog (20210331/psobject-220)

[kato181]

I would d/l the edge.iso as it has the latest set of drivers for the system you have it is Cinnamon or you could install Xfce is have a 4 month old system and I installed Cinnamon and Xfce on it and haven't struck any problems with them. I would try a fresh install, then without any updates see if the menu is working then.

[The_Mystic]

I would d/l the edge.iso as it has the latest set of drivers for the system you have it is Cinnamon or you could install Xfce is have a 4 month old system and I installed Cinnamon and Xfce on it and haven't struck any problems with them. I would try a fresh install, then without any updates see if the menu is working then.

I downloaded ISOs of Cinnamon, Cinnamon Edge, and Xfce, plus a fresh copy of MATE. They all passed the sha256 checksum. When I tried to install them, they all had to be started in Compatibility Mode. Here are the results after the install:

• MATE needed a hard shutdown after its first reboot after installing, then had to be started in Recovery Mode. As before, there was no menu. This is basically what happened with all previous attempts to install MATE. For the record, though, the menu worked perfectly every time when I booted the MATE ISO.
• Xfce refused to boot.
• Cinnamon booted with no trouble. The menu came up normally. Then I installed updates via Update Manager, and rebooted. Cinnamon rebooted to a blank screen with just a cursor in the corner, and was totally unresponsive.
• Cinnamon Edge went just like regular Cinnamon, but Edge survived the reboot.

As much as I'd prefer to stay with MATE, I may have to switch to Cinnmon Edge, at least until Mint 21 comes out. Hopefully, there will be some fixes in MATE so it'll work better for me; Cinnamon is a bit too fancy for my tastes, and Xfce is too simplistic.

In the meantime, I'm still open to suggestions for getting MATE to work properly for me in Mint 20.3. I'll also play around with it in VirtualBox to see what happens there.

[kato181]

Weird.. Ensure you have selected the following..
Sata mode = AHCI
Enable UEFI
Disable secure boot
Disable fast boot.
Post the results of the following commands so we can see what is happening.

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sudo parted -l

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sudo parted --list

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mokutil --sb-state

When you boot into the live session, it should boot into 4 menu's select..Select Start Linux Mint 20.3 Mate (Compatibility mode) If it still doesn't work then we will try the following..
Let's change a line in the grub file. With the live session Mate inserted, reboot, then keep hit the Esc key until the boot men appears, then select the Mate menu and hit the E key to edit.
Then scroll down to the line that say's..
linux /casper/vmlinuz and at the end after quiet splash insert the following nomodeset so it look like this
quiet splash nomodest -- then save and then reboot and see what happens.

[The_Mystic]

Secure boot was already disabled. I couldn't change the other settings; nothing was offered in the BIOS to change them.

I was always able to start a MATE live session in Compatibility mode without editing GRUB, so (probably, and hopefully) no worries there.

Below are the results of the commands you posted; I ran them in the live session. Apparently, sudo parted -l and sudo parted --list are the same command, so I only listed that result once.

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mint@mint:~$ sudo parted -l
Model: ATA CT1000MX500SSD1 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size   File system     Name  Flags
 3      1049kB  893GB   893GB  ext4
 2      893GB   893GB   102MB  fat32                 boot, esp
 1      893GB   1000GB  107GB  linux-swap(v1)        swap


Warning: The driver descriptor says the physical block size is 2048 bytes, but
Linux says it is 512 bytes.
Ignore/Cancel? i                                                          
Model: Lexar USB Flash Drive (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 64.1GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 2048B/512B
Partition Table: mac
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start  End     Size    File system  Name   Flags
 1      2048B  6143B   4096B                Apple
 2      315kB  4411kB  4096kB               EFI


Model: MTFDHBA512QFD-1AX1AABHA (nvme)
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 512GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End    Size   File system  Name  Flags
 1      1049kB  512GB  512GB  ntfs               msftdata

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mint@mint:~$ mokutil --sb-state
SecureBoot disabled
Platform is in Setup Mode

sda is the drive where I've been installing Mint. sdb is a flash drive running the live session. nvme0n1 is the SSD that came with the laptop; for some weird reason, it refused to install Mint, so I use it for storage.

[kato181]

Do you still have windows installed on it?
Having read the contents of the inxi report more closely, together with your last comment re LM not installing to the Nvme0n1, I have a feeling that HP along with Acer, are locking owners out of the bios area that enables you to change the sata mode settings. I believe there are some work rounds for HP, unlike acer where you can't do a thing to get to the settings, they getting more and more locked into micro$haft and crappy winwoes.
I'll be away for a few days, so I won't be able to assist you much, but if you google the search and ask for..How to enable sata mode in your laptop model you should get some results. The ACPI bios error you can disregard as it won't affect the running of LM, it's just a nuisance, there are ways to stop them appearing but I don't bother about it popping up..
Update..
I checked your laptop doing a search and if you do not have Advanced in your bios then you are out of luck according to HP. Advanced mode let's you change the sata mode without it, you can't.
The following is a reply from one of HP techs to a person asking a similar question..
Hi:
The drive controller your notebook has should already be set to AHCI by default and the AHCI controller should be listed in the device manager under the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers device manager category.
A NVMe SSD uses a separate NVMe storage controller driver, not AHCI.
No consumer class notebooks have been able to have the storage controller settings changed by the user in years.
If you bought an Asus, Dell or Lenovo PC, it would be the same.
Stupid answer really in my opinion, is that they are saying you have to have winwoes installed to have it enabled. But if you wanted to do a fresh install of winwoes say win10 Pro, then the same problem exists, whereas windows will say upon installation, that there is NO drive present, which means the drive is locked into winwoes only. I don't know if you could install another Nvme in place of the existing one or whether you will get the same error or not.
Going with past experience with Acer techs, when I said I wanted to enable sata mode so I can install Linux in place of winwoes, they quickly replied by saying they can't help me because they do not support linux at all. Lucky I found the correct way of doing it, so now my acer is purring along happily without winwoes.

[user6c57b8]

menu is blank ... I opened the menu to discover it was empty

I'm 900%sure this is a graphics card issue.
go sudo dmesg | less and try scrolling through to see if anything jumps out of the screen (lol). I mean anything error/unusual. If you get impatient go to the top of the file with "Home" key and then use "/" key to search for 'nvidia' and 'nouveau'.
What you probably need is the latest nvidia drivers.
There is this cool/slick/automated driver update tool that comes with mint/ubuntu but I can't remember its name.
Try apropos driver and I'm 30%sure the update tool is in that list somewhere.

[The_Mystic]

I'm not quite sure how it happened, but the menu in MATE is working properly now.

My laptop originally came with Windows 11, which I removed when I first installed Mint 20.3 MATE. I installed Windows 10 alongside Cinnamon Edge on sda to see if it would cause the Advanced tab to show up in BIOS. Windows installed normally, but Advanced didn't appear. In lieu of losing a day installing Windows updates, I retried installing Mint MATE 20.3 on nvme0n1. MATE installed as normal, and the menu worked without issue.

The ACPI bios error you can disregard as it won't affect the running of LM, it's just a nuisance, there are ways to stop them appearing but I don't bother about it popping up..

If you're not worried about the ACPI errors, then neither am I. Nothing seems to be affected by the errors, so that's good. I can live with this.

Update..
I checked your laptop doing a search and if you do not have Advanced in your bios then you are out of luck according to HP. Advanced mode let's you change the sata mode without it, you can't.
The following is a reply from one of HP techs to a person asking a similar question..

I found a question on HP's support forum; the person was asking about enabling SATA and TRIM for HP Pavilion 15 p051us, so it should be close enough for our purposes. The one and only reply can be found here. Put simply, they're saying, "You can't change AHCI. Go away." Again, it's nowhere near the best answer. However, since everything seems to be working fine now anyway, it's probably kind of a moot point.

EDIT
Now I just have one minor problem: Whenever I close the lid, the wifi connection gets cut off, and I have to reconnect (my old laptop used to do this too). But that's an issue that can be resolved another time. And in another topic.