reboot fails on Dell XPS, Ubuntu 16.04

Question

I just installed Ubuntu 16.04 on a new Dell XPS laptop, and everything is working great out of the box except that Ubuntu will not reboot or power down. Attempting to reboot from the menu in the upper right corner of the GUI does nothing (dialog closes with no failure message and the system does not shut down). From the terminal I get:

$ sudo reboot
Failed to start reboot.target: Transaction is destructive.
See system logs and 'systemctl status reboot.target' for details.

$ sudo systemctl status reboot.target
● reboot.target - Reboot
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/reboot.target; disabled; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: inactive (dead)
Docs: man:systemd.special(7)

with similar results for sudo shutdown. Is this a bug or is there a fix? Thanks!

Answer 1

I had the same problem occurs to me. The problem occurs when an earlier suspend didn't complete.

I suggest that you simply suspend your laptop once again (you can do so in a terminal with sudo pm-suspend) ; wait for a few seconds and resume the laptop.

From there it should reboot and shutdown properly.

Answer 2

Here's what solved this problem for me (Dell Precision 3510, Ubuntu 16.04):

In the BIOS there's an option "wake on USB when in dock" or something to that effect (emphasis mine), which was activated. Deactivate that option, reboot. Now I can suspend again.

HTH