Ubuntu

Black Screen after launching Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

Asked by Spotty

I've got Ubuntu 12.04 LTS installed as a dual boot with windows.

It was working for a couple of days. During that time I installed Steam. After launching steam last night I got a message saying there was a new video driver package and suggested that I install that. I clicked ok. It ran for a sec but then popped up a window with a number of errors.

Now when I power on, I get the Gnu Grub loader and if I select the default which is "Ubuntu, with linux 3.8.0-30-generic" the screen will flicker purple but then go black never to come back. Interestingly, after 5-6 minutes if I press my start button the screen goes back to purple with Ubuntu written on it, just like it's doing a correct shut down. (It then powers off)

I can select recovery mode and I'm given several options:
Resume normal boot: This causes the black screen to come up and never go away.
Clean: Found a few packages to remove but that didn't seem to affect anything
dpkg Repair Broken Packages: This doesn't find any problems and doesn't fix the problem
Run in Failsafe Graphics mode: This flashes quick and then when I next select Resume Normal Boot will bring up a terminal.
fsck: This doesn't find any problems
grub: didn't try this since grub seems to be working
network: Tried this but to no avail.
root: I can get to a root terminal, but not sure what to do then. (But see next paragraph below)
System Summary just shows info all of which seems fine.

If I do get to a terminal, I found a suggestion on another thread saying try Cntrl-Alt-F7 which I've tried. Most of what gets written flashes by in a hearbeat, but one of the lines on the screen says:
"Starting load fallback graphics devices [fail]"
"initctl: Event Failed"

So, anyone got any ideas how to fix this? I'd guess that my graphics driver is corrupt/bad but I'm a total Ubuntu newbie and have no idea what to do about that.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

. This will allow me to get to a terminal but being too much of Linux newbie I'm not sure what to do.

Intel i7 CPU
NVIDIA GeForce 8400GS

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Spotty
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Revision history for this message
actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

Run:

sudo lshw -C display

Do you see an Intel and an Nvidia GPU? Is the system a laptop?

Thanks

Revision history for this message
Spotty (chip-i) said : 		#2

sudo lshw -C display gives the following:

*-display UNCLAIMED
    description: VGA compatible controller
    product: GT218 [GeForce 8400 GS Rev. 3]
    vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
    physical id: 0
    bus info: pci@0000:04:00.0
    version: a2
    width: 64 bits
    clock: 33Mz
    capabilities: pm msi pciexpress vga_controller bus_master cap_list
    configuration: latency= 0
    resources: memory:fa000000-faffffff memory:d0000000-dfffffff memory:ce000000-cffffff ioport:bc00(size=128) memory:fbb00000-fb7ffff

My computer is a desktop, not a laptop.

Revision history for this message
Spotty (chip-i) said : 		#3

Posted to launchpad, but sent via email too:

sudo lshw -C display gives the following:

*-display UNCLAIMED
     description: VGA compatible controller
     product: GT218 [GeForce 8400 GS Rev. 3]
     vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
     physical id: 0
     bus info: pci@0000:04:00.0
     version: a2
     width: 64 bits
     clock: 33Mz
     capabilities: pm msi pciexpress vga_controller bus_master cap_list
     configuration: latency= 0
     resources: memory:fa000000-faffffff memory:d0000000-dfffffff
memory:ce000000-cffffff ioport:bc00(size=128) memory:fbb00000-fb7ffff

My computer is a desktop, not a laptop.

On 9/25/2013 11:41 AM, actionparsnip wrote:
> Your question #236358 on Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/236358
>
> Status: Open => Needs information
>
> actionparsnip requested more information:
> Run:
>
> sudo lshw -C display
>
> Do you see an Intel and an Nvidia GPU? Is the system a laptop?
>
> Thanks
>

Revision history for this message
Spotty (chip-i) said : 		#4

Boy talk about ugly.

Okay been trying a lot of things, not positive which things were the magic bullets, but I think it was mostly:

From Gnu Grub launch in recovery mode. Then from there run FailSafe Graphics Mode. (I would select that, then it would just flash and then I would select resume launching) This would bring me to a terminal.

I ran the following to remove the current drivers:

sudo apt-get remove nvidia-173 nvidia-current nvidia-current-updates
(I suspect nvidia-173 wasn't even there, but it was listed on the site I got these instructions from)

Then to clean up:

sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo apt-get autoremove

Install driver:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-current-updates

Now, the above didn't work. (Although I think it was a step in the right direction)
I tried running a script to configure nvidia but that just errored

Then I tried sudo apt-get install nvidia-current
After doing this, the ubuntu would load to a terminal but not the desktop

Next I ran sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop and then after that it now boots up to the desktop.

Hope this helps any that come across this same problem