Ubuntu
xserver-xorg-video-nv package

10.04 AMD64 desktop Live CD hangs during boot

Asked by madrivereric

Hardware:
  processor: AMD64
  motherboard: Asus M2NB uP-VM CSM with 2GB RAM
  Graphics: on board nVidia Quadro NVS210S GPU
  (Harddrives: 250GB IDE, 500GB Sata, 1TB Sata
   Happauge PVR-350, PVR-150, Firewire card)

Tested live CD's md5 check sum before & after burning -- good. Live CD boots an E-machine AMD64 computer ok, so CDROM image assumed & tested good.

Ran memtest on above machine -- good.

Above machine presently running Ubuntu 8.10. Want to upgrade to 10.04. Download & burn ISO image.

Reboot with live CD-ROM; get small graphic image at bottom of screen; screen goes black (hard drive activity light on/cd-rom light off). Stays this way for 10+ min. remove CD-ROM & test on e-machine computer. Worked fine.

Based on web research, press down arrow key during graphic image, select boot options and try combinations of nomodeset, acpi=off with quiet and splash removed from boot options.

adding / removing acpi=off has no impact.

adding nomodeset allows computer proceed through boot process; however, Xorg is unable to start and defaults to console prompt. 5x attempts all look the same, small screen flash and then nothing (Xorg.*.log error is can't find a display).

removing nomodeset screen flashes unreadable boot text (disk devices, etc) and immediately goes black / hangs as above.

What is wrong? Had no problems with 6.x, 7,x or 8,x live CD's booting this machine...

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Ubuntu xserver-xorg-video-nv Edit question
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actionparsnip
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marcobra (Marco Braida) (marcobra) said : 		#1

please try this: http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-fix-ubuntu-10-04-lts-lucid-blank-screen-at-startup.html

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madrivereric (madrivereric) said : 		#2

Solution #1 was what I had already tried (nomodeset)
Tried Soln #2 nomodeset + xforcevesa with no difference from nomodeset alone. Still ended up at the command line.
did not try soln #3 since am booting into the RAM disk...

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#3

Do you want to upgrade the current install or upgrade by removing the current install and installing Lucid clean?

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madrivereric (madrivereric) said : 		#4

Basically a clean install, followed by a transfer of user data & wine applications. I'm presently booting off the 250MB HD and so I was going to do a clean install on a blank 1TB HD and then transfer things over so that I can remove the 250MB IDE drive...

Tried soln #3 to see what would happen: mounted the drive with the 8.10 /etc directory and copied over the xorg.conf file. Xorg found and used my working file, but since the nvidia drivers aren't installed in the live CDROM's kernel, it didn't get too far...

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madrivereric (madrivereric) said : 		#5

Last night, I decided to try skipping the step of running the live CD to confirm 10.04 works with my HW. Therefore, I put in the blank 1TB HD (and removed the existing HD's) to try doing a fresh install.

When I selected the fresh install with no changes, the same result occurred: black screen and constant on HD activity light.

Trying again, but this time adding the nomodeset option via F6, went through a boot sequence and dumped out at the console. Didn't know what the command line command would be to initiate the installation. Tried one or two guesses and gave up for the night...

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Best actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#6

I'd recommend trying the alternate cd, it installs in a text based system but will install a regular ubuntu desktop.

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madrivereric (madrivereric) said : 		#7

Down loaded the alternate cd and it worked just fine. The install to the fresh HD worked "right out of the box" -- even had the full screen resolution and didn't have to adjust anything (unlike in the previous versions).

Bummer about the LiveCD...

Thanks for the help!