Thinkpad W520 5.16 kernel will not boot. Blank screen

My 11 year old W520 has an issue with the 5.16 kernel. I have the Optimus graphics set in BIOS to run only the nVidia portion and am running the nouveau driver as I’ve had problems with both of the nVidia drivers.

On completing installion of Manjaro I did a full system update and chose reboot when the updates were completed. On the reboot I got a blank screen with the disk activity light on continuously for a couple of minutes then a short blink then on continuously again. I left it to see what would happen but after almost an hour there was no change.

The 5.15 kernel works fine. I tried installing the 5.17 testing kernel and it gives the same results as the 5.16 kernel.

2 questions.

Any suggestions on what I should do to get 5.16 working?

If I cannot solve the problem with the 5.16 kernel about how long can I keep using 5.15 and will it affect system performance over time?

Kernel 5.15 is an LTS Kernel and will be supported for several years so you should be fine using it.

Okay, thanks straycat. I’ll keep trying as the 5.17 is matured but it’s a relief to know that using 5.15 won’t be a problem even in a year or 2.