Dell laptop remains stuck on Dell logo unless connected to power supply

I installed Fedora 35 and everything was fine. I was coming from Ubuntu and I found the Grub menu a bit too plain, so I tried manually installing a Grub theme. It didn’t work so I removed the modifications and now Fedora boots only if I have a power supply of my laptop attached. Otherwise it remains stuck on the Dell logo.
If I press F12 and choose Windows, it boots. If I choose Fedora, it remains on a black screen without the logo.
I must have messed up something, but I don’t know what and how to fix it. Any suggestions?

The theme uses a wrong path to the config file.

Please read the topic, almost on the end it explains the reason and it also has a link to the wiki.

https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/grub-doesnt-detect-fedora-after-installing-a-grub-theme/72600/26

And if the grub.cfg file under /boot/efi is altered with that command then the recovery requires that the original grub.cfg file in that location be restored.
It can easily be restored with

  1. sudo rm /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg
    followed by
  2. sudo dnf reinstall grub2-efi
    which will restore that file so it redirects grub to the actual config file at /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
  3. sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /etc/grub2-efi.cfg
    which will rebuild the proper grub.cfg file as well.

That rendered my system unbootable. Had to recreate grub.cfg through chroot.

Sorry.
I should have also suggested that you do sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /etc/grub2-efi.cfg so it rebuilt the /boot/grub2/grub.cfg file at the same time

I edited my post above to add that step.

That doesn’t solve the problem. I still have to connect my charger to get past the Dell logo and for the Grub menu to appear.
It baffles me how powering on with or without the AC charger could affect booting.

Must have to do with the power saving settings. Do you have some options in the bios?

This may be a battery issue. If the battery is actually very low in power the machine will not fully boot. When you plug it into the power supply the battery condition no longer matters since it is now running off the power supply power. This can happen if the battery is failing or the charger is not working properly.

Just another thing to check.

This is happening even when the battery is fully charged. Furthermore, if I press F12 and choose Windows from the boot menu, it boots.

There was a nasty bug recently, where kernel 5.17 (< 5.17.5) was soft bricking the entire laptop. (Would only turn on again, when battery removed.) (see Dell Inspiron 5515 - Can't power on after shutdown or suspend (#1995) · Issues · drm / amd · GitLab and Issue #798: [kernel] Kernel 5.17.4 and below cause soft-brick with Ryzen 5700U based laptops | rhbz#2080694 - blocker-review - Pagure.io).

Your issue could be a similar issue or even the same.
Have you updated to kernel 5.17.5 yet (for F35 it’s in stable repo since 2 days)?

If the bug remains, report it against the “kernel” package on bugzilla.redhat.com

I’m installing the normal updates.
uname -r reports 5.17.5-200.fc35.x86_64

and it still persists? so your issue is different because this bug is reported to be fixed in 5.17.5

what is the model of your laptop and which CPU?

You should report this as a new bug.

My laptop is a Dell 5482 2-1 with an Intel® Core™ i5-8265U CPU @ 1.60GHz × 8.
Also, I didn’t open up my laptop to disconnect battery. It is enough to connect the power supply.

If a BIOS update doesn’t fix it, report a bug against kernel. Maybe shutdown leaves the system in a weird state that doesn’t allow power-on.

There was a recent BIOS update. I’m not sure if that was before or after I installed Fedora. I’ll do some more tests with restarts and power off from Windows too.

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Where would I find logs that might shed some light on the issue?

I tested booting into Windows with the F12 Boot menu and Windows boots without the charger.
Then if I restart or power off and turn on again and try booting Fedora with the charger disconnected, it still gets stuck on a black screen.

Bug submitted: 2083098 – Dell laptop stuck on boot when booting on battery power

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This really sounds like something in fedora that does not like the way power is reported from the battery. I have had similar on my Asus laptop but only when the battery was <15%. In that case it started booting and then shutdown again.

My system expects grub.cfg to be in /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/. Without it I end up with a grub> prompt.

After running these commands I had to copy the grub.cfg file from /boot/grub2/ to /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/

Yes, Fedora expects to find a grub.cfg file at that location. Since fedora 33 that has been a stub file that redirects grub to the actual grub.cfg file located at /boot/grub2/grub.cfg.

System updates only update the file in /boot/grub2 and the links /etc/grub2.cfg and /etc/grub2-efi.cfg both point to that file.

After running which commands?
I doubt you had to copy the file there. You certainly may have chosen to do so.

If you do that it may work once, but then system updates will require you to manually repeat that action for each time the grub.cfg file is automatically updated since that file does not ever get updated by anything except a reinstall of certain parts of grub. Certainly with each kernel update you will have to repeat the copying of grub.cfg. If not you will never be able to access the newly installed kernel.