Ubuntu

Blank screen at first startup, but system still responsive

Asked by Firefly

First, I tried installing from graphical install CD, but the screen would go blank with a cursor in the upper left corner of the screen after the Ubuntu load screen. This happened in both the regular boot and the safe graphics mode. Next, I tried the alternate installer and the install worked flawlessly.

When I booted into Ubuntu for the first time, the screen went completely blank after the Ubuntu load screen. However, my system was still responsive. I blindly typed my username, pressed 'enter', typed my password, pressed 'enter', and then the startup music played through my speakers. The screen was still blank. <ctrl><alt>F1 successfully gets me to the command prompt. I notice the following text at the top of the screen once the command prompt comes up, if this helps any:

Starting up...
Loading, please wait
usplash: Setting mode 1920x1440 failed
usplash: Using mode 1600x1200
kinit: name_to_dev_t (/dev/sda5)=sda5(8,5)
kinit: trying to resume from /dev/sda5
kinit: No resume image, doing normal boot...

My specs:
Ubuntu 7.04
Motherboard: MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum/SLI (nForce 4 architecture)
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+
RAM: Corsair XMS 2GB (dual-channel)
Hard Drive: Maxtor 6L300S0 300GB (using 100GB partition)
Video Cards: Two eVGA nVidia GeForce 6800GT in SLI
Monitor: Dell 2405fpw (native resolution is 1920x1200)

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Ralph Janke (txwikinger) said : 		#1

Thanks for your question.

If you can select the menu item in the boot menu with the key 'e', you get the boot options. Please delete 'splash' and 'quiet'. Now you should see all error messages.

Another way is to run dmesg and look at the log for warnings and error message.

If you like you can post them here and we can have a look at them.

I hope this helps

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Firefly (jtsmith15) said : 		#2

After deleting splash and quiet, the text flies by too quickly for me to decipher any error messages. However, after pressing ctrl+alt+f1, the last page of the text remains. The only thing on it resembling an error message is the following:

*umpkeycodes: No such device
*Starting powernowd /etc/rc2.d/S20powernowd:156: cannot create /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0//cpufreq/scaling_governor: Directory nonexistent
*CPU frequency scaling not supported

From dmesg:

[1.696000] Cannot allocate resource for EISA slot 4
[14.288000] powernow -k8: MP systems not supported by PSB BIOS structure
[14.288000] powernow -k8: MP systems not supported by PSB BIOS structure

That's all I could find.

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Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said : 		#3

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.