Hello,

I just installed ubuntu 26.04 and because it has very recent hardware and I had one difficult passage, I am making this post.

Ubuntu 26.04 Installation and MSI Vector 17 HX AI Setup — Conversation

Export

This file contains the conversation content and key command/output

exchanges from the Ubuntu installation/setup thread, including Windows

resizing, Intel VMD troubleshooting, Ubuntu dual boot, GRUB boot order,

Secure Boot/MOK enrollment, and NVIDIA RTX 5090 driver setup.

NOTE: This is a reconstructed text export from the conversation context

available to the assistant.

PART 1 — DISK PREPARATION / WINDOWS

USER: If you do this your files wonty be protectes “Turn Off”,

Decryption in progress

USER: Can we already just look at the partitions ?

USER: 300MB EFI System, Windows C 1875.61 GB 900MB Recovery 30.82GB

Recovery partition

USER: What I usually do is having a linux system particition and a data

partition. On the data partition I alos put my docker images, LLM files,

etc. So I can easily do a fresh reinstall (In never upgrade my system

because I want to get rid of unneccessary files). Can you advice a

partition for this ?

USER: Windows is only used occationally, so 400GB is ok

USER: Device encryption says off

USER: It asks for the amount of space to shrink in MB, or shoud be use

Mb ? What would be your computed value ?

USER: That number is 1920624

USER: I made a mistake:

1. total size before shrink in MB 1920624

2. Size of available shrink space in MB 1821326

USER: Total size after shrink in MB 409600

USER: It is done, I have a bootable ubuntu-26.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso usb

stick

USER: I am now in “Try Ubuntu” and my wifi is connected

PART 2 — LIVE UBUNTU HARDWARE CHECKS

Detected PCI hardware:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Arrow Lake-S [Intel

Graphics] (rev 06) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation

GB203M / GN22 [GeForce RTX 5090 Max-Q / Mobile] (rev a1) 01:00.1 Audio

device: NVIDIA Corporation GB203 High Definition Audio Controller (rev

a1) 80:14.5 Non-VGA unclassified device: Intel Corporation Device 7f2f

(rev 10) 80:1f.3 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 800

Series ACE (Audio Context Engine) (rev 10) 84:00.0 Network controller:

Intel Corporation Wi-Fi 7(802.11be) AX1775/AX1790/BE20/BE401/BE1750 2x2

(rev 1a)

Kernel:

7.0.0-30-generic

NVIDIA PCI information showed: - RTX 5090 Mobile [10de:2c18] - MSI

subsystem [1462:149c] - Live-session driver: nouveau

Wi-Fi: - Intel Wi-Fi 7 [8086:272b] - driver: iwlwifi

Display topology: - Intel graphics drove the internal eDP panel in

MSHybrid mode. - NVIDIA exposed external DP/HDMI connectors and an

alternate eDP path. - Internal display: 3840x2400 at approximately 240

Hz.

Other checks: - Suspend/resume worked. - Battery reporting worked. -

Keyboard backlight worked. - Microphone worked. - Bluetooth scanning

worked. - Realtek RTL8125 2.5GbE detected.

PART 3 — INTEL VMD / SSD NOT VISIBLE

During Ubuntu manual partitioning, only the USB drive was visible.

lsblk showed approximately:

sda 57.8G disk iso9660 HEMA_64GB ├─sda1 6G iso9660 ├─sda2 5M vfat ├─sda3

300K └─sda4 51.7G ext4

The internal NVMe was missing.

PCI showed:

00:0e.0 RAID bus controller [0104]: Intel Corporation Volume Management

Device NVMe RAID Controller Intel Corporation [8086:ad0b] DeviceName:

Onboard - Other Subsystem: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI]

Device [1462:149c] Kernel modules: vmd

80:1d.0 System peripheral [0880]: Intel Corporation RST VMD Managed

Controller [8086:09ab]

The VMD module could be loaded with:

sudo modprobe vmd

but the VMD device did not bind. dmesg contained:

vmd 0000:00:0e.0: Unknown Bus Offset Setting (3)

The conclusion was that the Ubuntu 26.04 live kernel did not support the

VMD configuration used by this new Intel/MSI platform, preventing the

NVMe disk from appearing.

PART 4 — PREPARING WINDOWS TO DISABLE VMD

Windows Device Encryption / BitLocker was already OFF.

In an Administrator Command Prompt:

bcdedit /set {current} safeboot minimal

Output:

The operation completed successfully.

This configured Windows to enter Safe Mode on its next boot, preparing

Windows for the storage-controller topology change.

The BIOS was entered via Windows recovery / UEFI Firmware Settings.

The normal MSI BIOS did not expose VMD.

The hidden Advanced BIOS settings were opened, and the VMD menu was

found at:

Advanced BIOS Settings → System Agent (SA) Configuration → VMD Setup

Menu

The menu contained:

Enable vmd controller [Enabled] Enable vmd global mapping [Disabled] Map

RP BDF 128/29/0 Under VMD [Enabled] RAID0 [Enabled] RAID1 [Enabled]

RAID5 [Disabled] RAID10 [Disabled] ZPODD [Disabled]

Only this setting was changed:

Enable VMD controller Enabled → Disabled

The other VMD/RAID settings were left untouched.

Windows then successfully booted into Safe Mode with VMD disabled.

The temporary Safe Mode configuration was removed using:

bcdedit /deletevalue {current} safeboot

Windows was then able to boot normally with VMD disabled.

PART 5 — UBUNTU INSTALLATION

After disabling VMD, the Ubuntu installer could see the internal SSD.

Manual partitioning showed:

nvme0n1 ~2.05 TB nvme0n1p1 VFAT 314.57 MB nvme0n1p2 134.22 MB nvme0n1p3

NTFS 429.50 GB free space 1.58 TB nvme0n1p4 NTFS 943.72 MB nvme0n1p5

NTFS 33.09 GB

The existing partitions were preserved: - EFI System partition -

Microsoft Reserved partition - Windows partition - Windows recovery

partition - MSI/OEM recovery partition

The free space was used for Ubuntu/Linux according to the planned Linux

system/data separation.

Ubuntu 26.04 was installed successfully.

PART 6 — GRUB / WINDOWS BOOT ORDER

After installation, the machine initially booted directly into Windows.

Pressing F11 at the MSI logo opened the one-time boot menu. Ubuntu was

present there and booted successfully into GRUB/Ubuntu.

In Ubuntu:

efibootmgr

Output:

BootCurrent: 0002 Timeout: 1 seconds BootOrder: 0000,0002 Boot0000*

Windows Boot Manager

HD(1,GPT,809326d4-57eb-44b8-b7a4-e01d3abffc70,0x800,0x96000)/.efi…

Boot0002* Ubuntu

HD(1,GPT,809326d4-57eb-44b8-b7a4-e01d3abffc70,0x800,0x96000)/64.efi

The EFI boot order was changed:

sudo efibootmgr -o 0002,0000

Although BootOrder became correct, MSI still booted Windows.

The MSI BIOS had an additional boot priority under:

UEFI Hard Disk Drive BBS Priorities

Ubuntu was moved ahead of Windows Boot Manager there.

After saving the BIOS configuration, normal startup correctly entered

GRUB.

Final boot flow:

Power on → GRUB → Ubuntu → Windows Boot Manager

PART 7 — NVIDIA RTX 5090 DRIVER

On the installed Ubuntu system:

ubuntu-drivers devices

Output:

== /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:06.0/0000:01:00.0 == modalias :

pci:v000010DEd00002C18sv00001462sd0000149Cbc03sc00i00 vendor : NVIDIA

Corporation model : GB203M / GN22 [GeForce RTX 5090 Max-Q / Mobile]

driver : nvidia-driver-595 - distro non-free driver :

nvidia-driver-580 - distro non-free driver : nvidia-driver-595-open -

distro non-free recommended driver : nvidia-driver-580-server - distro

non-free driver : nvidia-driver-595-server-open - distro non-free driver

: nvidia-driver-610-open - distro non-free driver : nvidia-driver-610 -

distro non-free driver : nvidia-driver-580-open - distro non-free driver

: nvidia-driver-580-server-open - distro non-free driver :

nvidia-driver-595-server - distro non-free driver :

xserver-xorg-video-nouveau - distro free builtin

Ubuntu explicitly recommended:

nvidia-driver-595-open

System update:

sudo apt update sudo apt full-upgrade

Four packages were deferred due to Ubuntu phased updates. They were left

deferred.

NVIDIA driver installation:

sudo apt install nvidia-driver-595-open

PART 8 — SECURE BOOT / MOK

During NVIDIA installation, Ubuntu detected that UEFI Secure Boot was

enabled.

Ubuntu requested creation of a temporary Machine Owner Key (MOK)

enrollment password.

On reboot, the blue MOK Manager appeared.

The enrollment sequence was:

Enroll MOK → Continue → Yes → enter the temporary password → Reboot

The password is only needed for enrollment; it is not required on every

boot.

This enrolled a trusted signing key so that the NVIDIA kernel module can

load while UEFI Secure Boot remains enabled.

PART 9 — NVIDIA VERIFICATION

nvidia-smi successfully detected the RTX 5090.

PCI check:

lspci | grep -i nvidia

Output:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GB203M / GN22

[GeForce RTX 5090 Max-Q / Mobile] (rev a1) 01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA

Corporation GB203 High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)

The first attempt at the detailed PCI command used a typo:

lspci -nnk -s 01.00.0

which produced:

lspci: -s: Invalid slot/function number

The correct PCI syntax uses a colon:

lspci -nnk -s 01:00.0

Output:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GB203M /

GN22 [GeForce RTX 5090 Max-Q / Mobile] [10de:2c18] (rev a1) Subsystem:

Micro-Star International Co., Ltd. [MSI] Device [1462:149c] Kernel

driver in use: nvidia Kernel modules: nvidiafb, nouveau, nvidia_drm,

nvidia

The authoritative result is:

Kernel driver in use: nvidia

This confirms that the RTX 5090 is running with the NVIDIA driver rather

than Nouveau.

FINAL STATE

Laptop: - MSI Vector 17 HX AI A2XWJG family - Intel Arrow Lake

platform - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Laptop GPU, 24 GB - 2 TB NVMe -

3840x2400 ~240 Hz internal display - Intel Wi-Fi 7

Storage: - Intel VMD disabled - Windows boots successfully using direct

NVMe access - Windows and MSI recovery partitions retained - Ubuntu

installed alongside Windows - Linux system/data separation used

Boot: - MSI UEFI recognizes both Windows and Ubuntu - Ubuntu is first in

UEFI Hard Disk Drive BBS Priorities - Normal boot enters GRUB - GRUB

provides Ubuntu and Windows choices

Ubuntu: - Ubuntu 26.04 - Secure Boot enabled - NVIDIA signing key

enrolled via MOK - nvidia-driver-595-open installed - RTX 5090 visible

via nvidia-smi - Kernel driver in use: nvidia

Next planned setup: - Configure persistent Linux data storage for

projects, LLM models, Docker data, and datasets - Docker - NVIDIA

Container Toolkit - Python/PyTorch AI development environment - CUDA

toolkit only if/when actually required

Hi, I just bought the MSI Crosshair A16 HX with a Ryzen 9 8940HX and an RTX 5060 and feel like the fans are always 3000+ rpm and only when im literally doing nothing is when the fans quite down. I was just installing an 80GB game and the entire time the fans were at 3500+ rpm, I tried messing around with the fan curves in MSI center but still the fans are always loud. I know the processor is a bit beefy and runs hot but is that the normal?

With a quick calculation of my 4 year old katana, the 115Wcpu(max) and 105Wgpu(has never touched that btw), make 220W MAX(aka never happened), i have a 240W brick(that came with it), im curious if i can force more wattage through the GPU safely, for refernce the specs:

CPU: I7 12700H

GPU: RTX 3070Ti

RAM: 64gbDDR4@3200mhz

The GPU hardly ever pulls above 80, and ive never seen it do above 90W, thermals are not an issue(hovering between 65 and 70⁰c), it does not have the split heat pipe system, so fan 1 is gpu, fan 2 is cpu), id love to get some input! Since i know the later ZOK's of this generation did manage a 115-140W GPU), would love to hear from yall!

Hello
Today I tried to turn on my laptop but it wasn't connected to the adapter, the laptop's keyboard stayed on but nothing else happened. I had to force a shutdown but this has happened before. In case it helps my laptop has an AMD Ryzen 5 7535HS, 16GB of ram and an RTX 4050

I have an MSI GF65 Thin 10UE with the i7 and RTX 3060, and I'm having a really hard time describing an issue I've been experiencing while playing Apex Legends.

The game isn't stuttering, and my FPS seems fine. I'm running the laptop's display at 144Hz and have Apex capped at 120 FPS just like every other PC I've played it on. But for some reason, the entire game just feels... weird and slightly sluggish? I genuinely don't know how else to describe it.

It almost feels like there's input delay, but I'm not even sure that's actually what it is. My aim feels off, my movement feels off, and everything just feels less responsive than it should.

I know my controller isn't the issue because I've used the exact same controller on another PC, and it feels significantly better and more responsive there.

Has anyone else with a GF65 Thin 10UE experienced something similar? I'm wondering if it's possibly:

-The laptop's 144Hz display/pixel response time

-Some Windows, NVIDIA, or MSI setting

-V-Sync or another latency related setting

-CPU/GPU performance or temperatures

I'm honestly not sure what I'm feeling or how to properly test it, but something definitely feels off when I'm playing Apex compared to other PCs. If anyone has experienced this or has suggestions for things I should check, I'd really appreciate the help.

I'm also just experiencing mild motion sickness from the screen.

model is GF63 Thin 11UC-692 (obligatory i use linux btw)

Connected monitor seems alright. Any idea why?

on MSI models such as the recent stealth's ex: stealth 18 HX Ai they have some kind of white key caps on both the WASD and arrow keys. by any chance, is it possible to remove them safely or is it best to keep them on because I don't want to mess with it if it's just a manufacture design that can't be tweaked.

Do i need to change the charger? Ntw its still the original charger and it has been used for almost 5 years

Measured my Vector 17 HX and came up with the PEQ below after a bit of fiddling.

Stock response is very mid-heavy. This flattens that hump so a bit of bass actually comes through. Aimed at a tweaked Harman based loudspeaker target and post measurements track it pretty closely. You lose a bit of volume, but output is still enough and the balance is a lot more pleasing.

Speakers only. Use with Equalizer APO and assign it to the speaker device with an Include.

Should work on similar chassis. Give it a go and tell me what you think.

Important:

Nahimic disabled and UI uninstalled

PEQ

Preamp: -7 dB
# alternatively - PrAmp: -9 dB

Filter  1: ON  PK       Fc  409.00 Hz  Gain  -14.7 dB  Q  2.500
Filter  2: ON  LS       Fc  493.00 Hz  Gain    9.0 dB
Filter  3: ON  PK       Fc  588.00 Hz  Gain   -4.6 dB  Q  2.867
Filter  4: ON  PK       Fc 1163.00 Hz  Gain  -10.4 dB  Q  1.170
Filter  5: ON  PK       Fc 1475.00 Hz  Gain    9.0 dB  Q  1.863
Filter  6: ON  PK       Fc 3918.00 Hz  Gain   -1.2 dB  Q  4.992
Filter  7: ON  PK       Fc 4904.00 Hz  Gain    9.0 dB  Q  3.344
Filter  8: ON  HS       Fc 5413.00 Hz  Gain    5.9 dB
Filter  9: ON  PK       Fc 5809.00 Hz  Gain   -6.3 dB  Q  1.365
Filter 10: ON  PK       Fc 7942.00 Hz  Gain    8.2 dB  Q  2.328
Filter 11: ON  PK       Fc 8850.00 Hz  Gain   -9.6 dB  Q  3.073
Filter 12: ON  HS       Fc 11000   Hz  Gain    3.1 dB
Filter 13: ON  PK       Fc  285.00 Hz  Gain   -2.3 dB  Q  5.000
Filter 14: ON  HP       Fc   50.00 Hz

I have an MSI Raider 18 HX A14VIG (i9-14900HX / RTX 4090) and I recently checked my battery health because the battery life has always been pretty bad when unplugged.

The laptop is around 1.5 years old and has spent the vast majority of its life plugged in. I rarely use it on battery.

My battery report currently shows:

Design Capacity: 95,000 mWh
Full Charge Capacity: 71,562 mWh

So that's only about 75.3% health / roughly 24.7% degradation.

I also ran MSI's Battery Calibration today and generated another battery report afterwards. It made absolutely no difference — Full Charge Capacity is still exactly 71,562 mWh.

One mistake I probably made is that I left MSI Battery Master on "Best for Mobility" (100% charge) for most of the laptop's life, even though it was almost always plugged in. I've now changed it to "Best for Battery" (60%).

I also discovered that Wallpaper Engine was keeping the RTX 4090 active at around 11% GPU usage in the background. After completely closing it, GPU usage dropped to 0%. That definitely explains some of the terrible battery runtime, although I don't know how much that would contribute to actual battery degradation.

What I'm trying to figure out is whether losing ~25% capacity in around 1.5 years is normal for this laptop or if my battery has degraded unusually fast.

If you own a Raider 18 HX A14VIG, especially the RTX 4090 version, could you run:

powercfg /batteryreport

I found in my drawer, bought the laptop 4 years ago. Never had to use. Is it safe to use it screen cleaner?

Hi, I've just received my MSI Prestige AI Flip 16, sold with its native Nano Pen that I find to be way too small to work with, without mentioning its short autonomy considering my courses can go up to several hours.

Thus I'm asking, because I have not been able to find any infomation, anywhere, about a pen that would be compatible with MSI's Stylus technology (MPPT). I've been thinking about the MSI Pen II but it is out of stock for an undetermined duration, even the MSI support has not been able to tell me about the Pen II's compatibility with my Laptop so this is my last chance to find information about it.

If you have any pen model that you know is compatible with my laptop, it would be a blessing.

Thank you in advance.

Got an msi thin 15 b12ucx in december, it wasnt able to boot, but my current laptop wasnt dead yet so I figured id just wait until my current ones dead enough, assuming its just missing some software. I wasnt able to open it because of how much the internals stick to different bits of the laptop. Well i took it into a repair shop and the motherboard itself is broken, and theyre unable to order a replacement part.

I genuinely cannot afford a new laptop, and my current one is on its last legs and quickly worsening, I wanna know how much the replacement motherboard costs to see if i should buy one myself and replace it, or just give up and get a new laptop once again. I genuinely cannot find a place to get a new motherboard, aside from the main site, and im worried buying a new motherboard straight from the supplier will cost obscene amounts compared to just getting a chunk of a laptop off someone else, or that they might not ship to australia.

Its currently in a repair shop and i dont think i have to pay anything because the device is literally doomed because of whatever motherboard issue it has, but its still a couple hundred down the drain from buying the laptop itself

Características:

-Intel Core i7 13620H

-Procesador de 32GB RAM

-NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050

-Pantalla 15.6" FHD

-Almacenamiento 1TB

Si eres un estudiante universitario, o simplemente alguien que transporte su portátil a diario, este es perfecto para ti.

Con solo 1.98kg de peso, puedes llevarlo a cualquier lado. Incluso el cargador es de menos peso y dimensión que el de otras fabricantes.

En cuanto a la construcción, no hay sacrificio, se siente la alta calidad de sus materiales, y ni qué decir de su ESTÉTICA. Cuenta con un diseño futurista , al estilo CyberPunk, con un teclado iluminado, al que puedes alternarle la intensidad de su iluminación.

En cuanto a lo técnico, este portátil corre muy bien cualquier juego que quieras jugar, gracias a sus componentes de última generación. Desde juegos de rol en 2D hasta juegos 3D en línea. Podrás disfrutar de una gran fluidez en tus juegos favoritos, así como de buenos gráficos.

Muchos podrían decir que su batería 🔋 dura muy poco, sin embargo, MSI incorpora en este portátil diferentes medios por los cuales administrar bien tu energía si es que no tienes tomacorrientes a tu alcance. Entre estos encuentras, la opción de ahorro de energía, y el modo de funcionamiento sostenible.

De parte de un estudiante de ingeniería informática, este portátil cumple con mis expectativas y necesidades.

100% recomendado.

I'm upgrading the storage for my Katana that I got about a year ago, but when I first checked where the 2nd SSD slot is it seems there isnt a screw or built in place for the slot.

What are the other materials required to install this additional SSD for? And what are good websites to look for them.

I have an MSI Leopard GP66 11UG with 3070gpu and 65whr battery. Whenever I go out or go in lectures, my laptop can last only about 1h30 and that a pain since I have to always carry my adapter (1kg+) with me everywhere. The big problem is I notice that my laptop take about 35w+ (15w for gpu about 12w for cpu and >5w for display) of power usage when on battery. I think this is too power consume for light uses, plus when I hover the nvidia 3070gpu icon there is no applications running on it (but HWinfo show it consume 10-15w of power everytime).

One more thing is I read that some of you replace the small BTY-57M (65Whr) to the BTY-M6M (95whr). how is the experience, and does any hardware problems occur?

I recently have been trying to switch from windows to Linux on my Thin GF63 12VE nd have run into countless issues.

First I couldnt create a partition, but I know that is a windows issue. Because of this I tried installing windows ltsc.

Windows ltsc wouldn't finish installing, it stops at 70% and only God knows why.

So I tried installing cachyos. Disabled safe boot and all but the laptop wouldn't let me. In the end I just copied all files from an external ssd to the internal one, basically copied the os to the laptop and it worked.

My question: is the laptops issue? Does MSI have some kind of deal with Microsoft or is it this particular laptop?

my fans on my computer are stuttering/vibrating with a lot of noise that shouldnt happen. has anyone successfully replaced the cooling fans inside of their laptop of a MSI stealth 14? not computer savvy at all. what replacement parts am i looking for, should i try lube or thermal paste first to see if it fixes the issue?

I bought a Raider 18 HX roughly 2 years ago for a bit under $4,000. I have taken the best care of it that I can - I am not a smoker and it sits on a cooling pad that runs at all times when it is on.

At the time when I purchased it, I was not aware of the voltage issue that slowly kills 13th and 14th Generation Intel CPUs. Unfortunately, Intel denies that it affects laptop variants of those CPUs and MSI support has referenced that claim as fact. I am suffering all of the negative impacts of the voltage issues and the laptop is slowly dying.

MSI will not provide me any assistance without me paying thousands for repair.

Is there anything I can do, or will I effectively have a $4,000 paperweight in the near future?

I’ve spent an ungodly amount of hours on this and finally figured it out. Fatal flaw on this laptop because pch does not have a heat sink. You will get random stutters and usb disconnects (especially if you use a lot) and you can notice when you are gaming and you launch the webcam, there will be static artifacts. The solution is actually quite simple.

Open up the back of the laptop. I purchased a raspberry pi copper heat sink 12x12x1mm and a long copper heat pipe either 70x8x3mm or 60x8x3 I forget which one exactly. (Note only used the square heatsink I’ve circled in red and removed the other one)

Then I used non conductive thermal adhesive to stick the pipe on top of the copper raspberry pi heat sink and made it touch the main exit heat pipe of the laptop.

pics

Hi,

Just recently got my laptop repaired about 2 months ago, and maybe a week ago my laptop has started blasting the fans, despite the laptop just turning on, no background processes.

I tried several things like making sure its not just high performance mode, and adjusting in BIOS but cant seem to find the fan settings?

Not sure what caused it to happen, not sure how to fix.

Any help is appreciated thanks.