ISO Fails to Pass "Detecting Network Hardware" or "Setting Up The Partitioner" Phase

Disclaimer: This issue was tested on:

  1. Kali i3-gaps
  2. Sandisk 8 GB USB
  3. Sandisk 16 GB USB
  4. Sandisk 32 GB USB
  5. Thinkpad L570
  6. Dell XPS 15 9510

After acquiring a Dell XPS 15 9510, I attempted to install encrypted LVM Kali on the laptop in question. In order to do that, I've updated my scripts and made sure everything was up to date and on par with the current build script. After getting my ISO, I burned the USB using Etcher (on Windows and on Linux), but for some reason (I assume this was caused by the 5.16 kernel not having the Intel Killer AX1650s WiFi cards supported, yet), the Dell doesn't progress beyond "Detecting Network Hardware" during installation. At first I thought this was an issue on hardware level, thus I got a new USB-C hub and a new USB and kept switching the peripherals around, in hopes of passing that screen, but sadly, even when connected via ethernet, the problem resumed.

After some digging, I wrote exit 0 after #!/bin/sh of /bin/check-missing-firmware in Text Installer and managed to get towards partitioning, but this same issue started happening there as well, where the partitioner would either not appear or end up being frozen in a percentage, like 45%. Despite erasing the nvme and trying ext4 or NTFS etc as the base, this issue kept happening.

When I tried the same USBs on my Thinkpad L570 with Kali already installed, I started having the same issues, where L570 either would not get past "Detecting Network Hardware" while being connected via ethernet, or end up being stuck in the partitioner.

As a result, when I tried one of the official Kali images/installers, this issue somewhat disappeared, where I was able to partition and encrypt my XPS, but sadly the installation kept failing (GRUB related issues).

I am unsure what is causing this difference between the custom ISOs and the official images and I haven't been able to pinpoint the cause of it. I'd appreciate your help on pinpointing this ASAP so we can get a fix out in case it's hindering anyone's work as well.

Kind regards.