ubuntu installation blank screen

have you made sure you have a good CD? did you run the md5 checksum?

Nope, and I haven't got a clue how!?

Have you tried to run the Alternate ISO? Ubuntu should install well on your hardware... maybe it's exactly as Sam Cater said.

Here you can find the Alternate ISO: http://ubuntu.fastbull.org/ubuntu-releases/6.10/
And here you'll find the HowToMD5SUM tutorial: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToMD5SUM
I hope this will help you out

Hi, thanks for the help,

I'd actually tried the alternate cd, which installed fine. It appears to be something on my laptop hardware that it doesn't like, as it gets to starting up and then just hangs, like the Live CD did. I did a bit of browsing for the md5sum business and most of it seemed to assume I was already on Linux, d'oh! I've tried removing each memory module individually, but no luck, and as it is a laptop there is nothing else I can remove to test! Any ideas?

I've now successfully used a different version of Linux successfully so would most definitely seem to be some sort of hardware incompatibility. I'm downloading the new one to try that now...

Hi,
Which Linux version are you using now? I haven't understood very well what you mean in your last post :)

Sorry I meant I was downloading the new Ubuntu, which still didn't work. It did exactly the same thing. Its llgp thats working alright

That's damn odd... You should open a new bug report.
You can find the link on the top-left named "Create bug report".
Please specify your full hardware specification in it, so people more technical than me will fix your problem!

At the first splash screen can you press F6 for further options and edit the line to remove "quiet" and "splash" from it and boot. You should see a load of messages fly up the screen and eventually it will stop. Let us know the last few lines you see and any specific errors.

You don't have any USB disks attached do you?

Ok sorry for the delay, the last two lines are:
[66.538973] ACPI: looking for DSDT in initramfs... file /DSDT.aml not found using machine DSDT.
[66.541281] ACPI: Setting ELCR to 0800 (from 0020)
[66.560959] CPU0: Intel(r) Pentium(r) 4 CPU 2.66GHz stepping 07

It then hangs. No USB devices are attached

Hope this helps

Try adding a custom value to the 'vga=' parameter when you boot up.

Here's a small table of the values

colour depth | 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024
256 (8bit) | 769 771 773 775
32000 (15bit)| 784 787 790 793
65000 (16bit)| 785 788 791 794
16.7 Mill.(24bit)| 786 789 792 795

For example:

Boot at 24bit, 800x600, you would add: vga=789 to the boot command.

Sounds like your screen/graphics card can't cope with the defaults.

Try vga=769 to start with.

I'm having this exact same problem. I hang at the same place as jeffb, except I have an Athlon XP 3000+.

I was having this problem as well before, and I was googling like mad trying to find an answer. My system hung at a different spot, it was saying clocksource tsc unstable (delta = ...

It would happen right after it brought up the loading box saying "Loading Linux Kernel" and then all I would see is the black screen and a white cursor blinking.

I went into my BIOS and looked for the ACPI settings. It was enabled by default, but greyed out and unable to be changed. However, I was able to change another option right below it which I can't recall right now, because I'd have to restart.

It basically gave 3 options, S1(startup at POST), S2 Started AFTER post(or something) and 3(which is what was selected) BOTH.

So I selected option one and now everything works fine. Sorry for the very vague answer, but hopefully this helps someone

I had a same issue with my latest laptop lenovo G550. The way i could install Ubuntu latest by passing boot parameters.
After booting from ubuntu CD, it will ask your option for live run, install and bla bla... After selecting install option; you will see boot option on bellow line.. some thing like.."boot *********** -- ". After "--" charcter you just type "nomodeset" and press enter.

Enjoy..

Indika

I had a same issue with my latest laptop lenovo G550. The way i could install Ubuntu latest by passing boot parameters.
After booting from ubuntu CD, it will ask your option for live run, install and bla bla... After selecting install option; you will see boot option on bellow line.. some thing like.."boot *********** -- ". After "--" charcter you just type "nomodeset" and press enter.

Enjoy..

Indika

Similar problem. I'm installing off of usb because I have no cd drive. Before I did vga=769 it went to blank screen (starting X?) and froze. Now it freezes in the same place, but the last few lines stay up long enough for me to read them:

  Begin: Running /scripts/init-bottom
  Done.
  init: ureadahead-other main process (2032) terminated with status 4
  init: ureadahead-other main process (2033) terminated with status 4
   * Setting sensors limits [ OK ]

then it waits a second or two, and goes completely unresponsive. Before vga=769 it showed some erratic colorful blocks before hanging on a blank screen. Now it keeps the screen as above, no blocks, doesn't go blank, but still hangs. Doesn't respond to ctrl+alt+del either. I have to hold the power button. I'm on an thinkpad x40.

Thanks,
Grem

Got it. See also

http://www.linuxformat.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=12132&sid=9b80d3d6a74109cd7e6486577a9abec0

and

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1465883

what was needed was the following on the boot command line:
  i915.modeset=0 xforcevesa

Thanks,
Grem