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I upgraded to Ubuntu 19.10 yesterday while going to bed and might have fallen asleep while installing. I don't recall if I interrupted or succesfully installed it.

I dual boot Ubuntu and windows should it be relevant.

When I boot Ubuntu up it does not show the loading bar and logo. It just goes plain blank purple and does not get any further.

Is there a way I can troubleshoot? If not, Is is possible to reinstall ubuntu keeping my data? If not, should I nuke it and install fresh with USB?

Jonas Grønbek
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  • Hit F12 and see what’s happening behind the purple screen – darksky Oct 18 '19 at 17:10
  • @darksky Okay. I'll be right back – Jonas Grønbek Oct 18 '19 at 17:11
  • @darksky Nothing happens. I try have tried to hold down F12 while booting an tapping it repeatedly after selecting Ubuntu. – Jonas Grønbek Oct 18 '19 at 17:22
  • That's weird. Try this. When the grub menu shows up press e, scroll down to the line that starts with linux, it looks like linux /boot/vnlinux-5.0.0.13-generic root=UUID..., at the end of this line you will see quiet or quiet splash. Remove that and type nosplash debug --verbose. Then press F10. This way, the kernel boots in verbose mode where you can see all the messages being printed to your screen. See if you find any errors that cause it to hang. – darksky Oct 18 '19 at 17:57
  • @Darksky I will have a reply within an hour – Jonas Grønbek Oct 18 '19 at 18:06
  • Okay, it may also be a graphics driver related problem. If you have an NVidia graphics card, you might need to reinstall the driver. If you want to temporarily fallback to the recovery graphics, add nomodeset to the end of nosplash debug --verbose as well. – darksky Oct 18 '19 at 19:43

2 Answers2

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If you have a dedicated GPU, the most common reason for getting the purple screen is the graphics driver needs to be reinstalled. To fix this see Fixing Ubuntu Freezing at Boot Time.

To summarize steps in link:

  1. Editing Grub
  2. Temporarily Modifying Linux kernel parameters in Grub
  3. Make permanent changes in Grub
  4. [Alternate for NVIDIA Graphics] Update your system and install proprietary NVIDIA drivers
  5. Enjoy Ubuntu Linux
WinEunuuchs2Unix
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sharing solution from this post To edit Grub2 during the boot process try the following:

  1. Immediately after the BIOS splash screen during boot, press and hold the SHIFT button. This will display you grub containing a list of kernels and recovery options

    enter image description here

  2. Press e to edit the first kernel displayed

    enter image description here

  3. Find the line ending with quiet splash. Add your boot option before these key words - i.e. so the line looks like [...]nomodeset quiet splash

  4. Press CTRL + X to boot

Follow the steps in Coldfish's answer on how to fix the nomodeset boot option permanently so that you don't have to go through this manual procedure again.

Community
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Ajay
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