UEFI not csm, mbr
For USB UEFI Ventoy boot :
Important is what´s going on with your bios settings on metal + ventoy settings
For USB Ventoy boot + loading live-iso
Important are the settings from metal + ventoy settings + dependance live-iso
To load over ventoy garuda-live-iso + test/install to metal
Secure-boot off, fastboot off, ahci mode + uefi mod on (correct resize-bar perhaps also)
settings ventoy: gpt mode, secure boot on (my mind) other settings what you need
(persistence, look, etc)
Default result should be then: ventoy loads → garuda live-iso loads (over grub2) → testing or install is then possible.
It maybe a nvidia issue, for the trouble you describe i get as well installing Mokka with the nvidia option and not the open source one.
These are the steps i must take to successfully install Mokka on my machine
do the installation with open source driver.
Then at first run, update and straight after the update install the nvidia drivers when the option comes up. After which i install the opensource D.M.K.S modules the nvida driver install could not successfully complete (check this while you install the nvidia drivers at first, for if no errors came up you may have no further problems and can now safely reboot your machine.)
i use the below command uninstalling any conflicting packages, when they come up, and reinstalling them after a successful install of the open source drivers.
I didn’t get any time to play on my desktop and other laptop the rest of the weekend.
I am starting to suspect an issue with Grub2.
I am writing this while testing…
At the office this afternoon focusing on mainly the dell laptop I grabbed the 250308 versions of the Dragonized and Hyprland flavors of Garuda, the 250422 version of CachyOS, and the 2025.03.19 version of EndeavourOS.
Via Ventoy, Grub2 does not boot the live environment on any of them, with or w/o Nvidia support. Endeavour is the only one that doesn’t get stuck on a black screen, but it gets stuck at
Downloading kernel ...
Downloading initrd ...
CachyOS boots from grub1 just fine with and w/o Nvidia support.
EndeavourOS will actually boot from either Grub or Grub2 when using the nomodeset option, something that is noticeably missing from the Garuda themed Grub2 so without modifying the Grub config I can’t test that yet.
I did check all the last year versions of these ISOs, since I had them already, and there were no issues at all booting them. To me this is becoming much less a Garuda issue and possibly something that is the same across all these recent Arch based distros concerning grub, or maybe the the kernel being used in the live ISOs.
I don’t have any more time to test today, I will be able to pick this up again this weekend for a bit.
This does not sound good! Lets hope it is fixed before long. Seeing you have not tried a non Arch Distro it be very interesting to know if these installation errors persist across platforms.