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I did a fresh complete install of Ubuntu 18.04 on my ASUS M32CD desktop.

Everything during install went fine. At the end it said it was complete complete, and would reboot. Popped the disc out. Rebooted itself back into bios so I changed it back from CD boot as primary to HD.

When it booted up for Ubuntu screen and then everything went black and can’t do anything now! Ugh. Help

Organic Marble
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Randy Anon
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  • Now it seems my freaking $1000 PC is borked. Tried reinstalling that froze up. Now what?!? – Randy Anon Oct 21 '18 at 09:17
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    It has a Nvidia graphics. Use nomodeset to boot the live session, install and until the proprietary Nvidia graphics drivers are installed. –  Oct 21 '18 at 09:29
  • I had the same problem I found a workaround here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1144800/ubuntu-18-04-2-boot-stuck-on-purple-screen-after-updates – Daniel Grieb Jul 09 '19 at 16:22

1 Answers1

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Enable nomodeset from GRUB boot menu

nomodeset is a kernel boot option. Adding the nomodeset parameter instructs the kernel to not load video drivers and use BIOS modes instead until X is loaded.

Safe Graphics Mode. A new option is added to the GRUB menu in 19.04 and later which will boot with nomodeset on. This may help you resolve issues on certain graphics cards and allow you to boot and install any proprietary drivers needed by your system.

Immediately after the motherboard / computer manufacturer logo splash screen appears when the computer is booting, with BIOS, quickly press and hold the Shift key, which will bring up a GNU GRUB menu screen. With UEFI press (perhaps several times) the Esc key to get to the GNU GRUB menu screen. Sometimes the manufacturer's splash screen is a part of the Windows bootloader, so when you power up the machine it goes straight to the GNU GRUB menu screen, and then pressing Shift is unnecessary.

You will see a GNU GRUB menu screen that looks like this:

enter image description here

Press e to enter editing mode. This will bring up a GNU GRUB screen that looks like this:

enter image description here

Use the arrow keys to navigate when screen editing the above screen. Navigate to after the string on this screen that starts with root=. In this example screen the full string is root= followed by UUID= and a hexadecimal string as shown below:

root=UUID=bcf15ef2-a0b2-4753-9558-8399dd12a729

Immediately after this string replace ro quiet splash by nomodeset quiet splash. This change is only temporary — it will just be used once and GRUB won't remember it in the future. Press Ctrl+X or F10 to boot with the nomodeset option that was added. If you make a mistake, press Esc to go back to the previous screen.

Install proprietary graphics driver

Ubuntu 18.04 is bundled with a tool named ubuntu-drivers-common which detects and installs additional driver packages. The proprietary graphics driver can be installed with the following commands:

sudo ubuntu-drivers install  
sudo reboot

The sudo ubuntu-drivers install command installs drivers that are appropriate for automatic installation including their dependencies, and the proprietary graphics driver will also be updated automatically when an update is available. If your computer has an Nvidia GPU ubuntu-drivers install will install the proprietary graphics driver for it, otherwise if your computer has an AMD GPU its graphics driver is included in the default Ubuntu installation.

When installing a proprietary graphics driver, it is not necessary to uninstall the open source graphics driver. The two graphics drivers can be installed alongside each other allowing the open source graphics driver to be used as a fallback alternative in case there is a problem using the proprietary graphics driver.

karel
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  • I don’t think it has Nvidia graphics card. It said it had intel chipset graphics card. – Randy Anon Oct 21 '18 at 15:32
  • I tried this and nothing happens when pressing shift – Randy Anon Oct 21 '18 at 15:44
  • I finally got it into GNU but nothing works my keyboard won’t go up or down or let me select anything ‍♂️ – Randy Anon Oct 21 '18 at 16:04
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    I've dealt with black screens before and the if you have a phone you're internet connected, and if the keyboard works you can use Ctrl+Alt+F3 to get into a virtual console and run sudo commands. The keyboard doesn't work in this situation. I keep a real lightweight Linux live USB on hand to test if I can use the mouse and keyboard in a live Linux session. If I can, that means my hardware is still good and I can at least boot or reinstall Windows. – karel Oct 21 '18 at 16:31
  • Ok no idea what that means lol – Randy Anon Oct 21 '18 at 16:37
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    This crap is way over my head. Think I’ll just reinstall windows 10 again – Randy Anon Oct 21 '18 at 16:57
  • I hope the Canonical team sees your comment, as this is exactly what is holding back Ubuntu from mainstream adoption – Gabriel Fair Sep 14 '19 at 12:23