If you are running Linux on a dedicated disk, and boot it sometimes from bare metal, and other times from VMware or Virutal Box. You may have experienced boot stuck which may be caused by X11 config or display driver.

Note that the same problem may occur if you are changing the GPU card between different vendors or attach the OS disk to another computer.

Manjaro boot stuck

Manjaro

I'm using Manjaro to explain the problem and the fix, but the idea should apply to other Linux distros as well.

First, we need to escape from the boot screen. Press Alt + F2 to switch tty2 and login.

Install driver

If you are running Manjaro Linux, use mhwd to install apropriate video drivers for your current hardware (video-virutalmachine or video-vmware if running in VMware, video-nvidia-xxxxx if running on bare metal with Nvidia cards, etc.)

For example, the following command would result in the automatic detection and installation of the best available proprietary driver for a pci-connected graphics card:

sudo mhwd -a pci free 0300

Otherwise, the following command would result in the automatic detection and installation of the best available free driver for a pci-connected graphics card:

sudo mhwd -a pci free 0300

Use mhwd -li to check current installed drivers.

Configure X11

The next step is to configure X11 to use the correct config.

If you are running on nvidia gpu, the following should work:

sudo mhwd-gpu --setmod nvidia --setxorg /etc/X11/mhwd.d/nvidia.conf

If running in VMware, use the following:

sudo mhwd-gpu --setxorg /etc/X11/mhwd.d/vmware.conf

You can always check what configs are available by:

ls /etc/X11/mhwd.d

And check current used config via:

ls -l /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/90-mhwd.conf

After applying the fix, reboot your machine with reboot command to see if it works.

References