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First I decided on Linux Mint 17.2, created a bootable USB with pendrivelinux and away I went. The mint logo came up, i chose to run mint, and then, my monitor went all blocky and showed part of my WINDOWS desktop!.

OK, maybe it was a bad install on the USB, I tried again. Same thing, but this time it was showing my different parts of my windows desktop, in the wrong order all over the screen.

Same thing with a different USB, using Rufus and Linux Live to create the bootable USB, same thing every time!

Decided it must my Mint's fault. So I moved on to Ubuntu MATE, same thing again! 3 different USB drives, 3 different live USB creates and 2 different ISO's.

Can anyone tell me WTF is going on?

The only recent change I've made to my PC is installing an SSD (Samsung Evo 850 120GB) to replace my HDD.

I've got Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit installed on the SSD at the moment and I was planning on dual booting.

Please help, I'm pretty noobish, and this is making my brain hurt.

Link to monitor pictures

Update 1 I can boot back into Windows 7 absolutely fine. Also, when booting into the Ubuntu MATE live USB i got the Ubuntu MATE logo and loading dots (beneath logo) for a little while before the monitor troubles. I tried leaving it for 20 minutes in that state, and turning monitor off / on, but nothing had changed.

Update 2 I tried a different monitor. Same thing again. Swapped HDMI for VGA, nothing changed.

Update 3 I can press ctlr+alt+f3 from the messed up screen and get to the terminal.

Update 4 I've managed to boot up into a Lubuntu 15.04 live USB

Rod Smith
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James
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  • Welcome to Ask Ubuntu! Have you tried a simple plain vanilla Ubuntu version using this system? – Fabby Jul 07 '15 at 22:38
  • No I haven't. But I've had Mint, Ubuntu, Xubuntu, and Lubuntu running in it before, albeit with an HDD not an SSD – James Jul 07 '15 at 22:39
  • Lubuntu is good enough... Can you try that again? – Fabby Jul 07 '15 at 22:43
  • OK, amazingly the Lubuntu live USB has worked. And I'm typing this in a live session on it. I'd quite like to get Ubuntu MATE on here though... – James Jul 07 '15 at 23:11
  • It sounds like a video driver issue. Chances are it's showing the Windows desktop because that's leftover data in the video card's memory. I recommend you post details about your video card(s). ATI/AMD and nVidia cards have multiple driver choices, so changing the video driver might help. Also, Ubuntu has a text mode; you can access it by hitting Ctrl+Alt+Fn (Fn being various function keys). This is useful in getting you access to the system to debug and repair video problems. – Rod Smith Jul 07 '15 at 23:33
  • My video card is an NVIDIA GeForce GT 630. I can get into the terminal with the Ubuntu MATE live USB using Ctrl+Alt+F3, but I have no idea how to install and change drivers that way. I've gone ahead and installed Lubuntu, meaning I now have the SSD partitioned how I would want it, it just has the wrong OS on it... – James Jul 07 '15 at 23:34
  • I'm not sure how it can be a driver issue as I've had Ubuntu 14.04 running in the machine before with the same graphics card, had no trouble what so ever, it just worked. – James Jul 07 '15 at 23:41
  • You can install whatever desktop environment you want; for instance sudo apt-get install unity or sudo apt-get install mate-desktop. That's most of the difference between the various *buntu versions. In some cases, installing additional packages is helpful or necessary. As to drivers, see this question and answers. It's entirely possible that your previous installation used a different driver by default; or this result could be a new bug. – Rod Smith Jul 07 '15 at 23:54
  • I agree with Rod: Just install Ubuntu and then install the MATE desktop... – Fabby Jul 08 '15 at 07:56

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As Lubuntu 14.04 seems to work: install that and then head over here on how to install the nVidia drivers and then just add the MATE desktop:

sudo apt-get install mate-desktop

and then you have what you want.

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Fabby
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