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I'm trying to dual boot Ubuntu 14.04 and Windows 7 on my laptop. It boots to a black screen and I'm pretty sure this is due to my nvidea graphics card. As numerous threads have pointed out I should boot with nomodeset. Following the instructions here I run into problems, namely, I cannot start Grub to select an entry and thereby cannot change "quiet splash" to "nomodeset".

If I press esc I am greeted instead with the following:

enter image description here

I tried right shift as well:

enter image description here

I also thought I could go through suggestion 2 in this answer. Problem here is that I never see the screen where I'm supposed to hit the down key. It just goes straight to the menu (so no selecting a language either). I Get the following menu and I cannot press F6 (or F-anything) to bring up a menu where I can navigate to nomodeset. All options other than "advanced options" or "help" immediately lead to a perpetual black screen. This means that I cannot repair Grub via any solutions offered here

enter image description here

There's a list of boot parameters under help, including how to install with acpi off. But I read that's the nuke approach and I should only do that when all else fails, so am hoping there's an obvious boot command for setting nomodeset I'm not familiar with.

relevant specs:

GPU / Graphics
Technology
Single VGA support; up to 100W per
card; Modular MXM 3.0b;
Upgradeable
VGA / GPU Graphics
Options
8GB GDDR5; NVIDIA GTX 980M
(N16E-GX); 1536 CUDA;
GPU/VRAM Clock
1038MHz/2500MHz; Maxwell
(28nm); MXM 3.0b; 100W
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Frikster
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1 Answers1

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Boot from the Ubuntu installation media.
Highlight Try Ubuntu without installing.
Press the E key.
Add nouveau.modeset=0 to the end of the linux line.
Press the F10 key to boot into the Live desktop.
Start installation of the Ubuntu system.

When finished boot the installed system.
Highlight the Ubuntu GRUB menu entry.
Press the E key.
Add nouveau.modeset=0 to the end of the linux line.
Press the F10 key to boot into Ubuntu system.
Now first of all install the NVIDIA drivers.

Reboot ... you don't have to add a parameter anymore.

cl-netbox
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  • Pressing the E key while highlighting "try Ubuntu without installing" does nothing :( – Frikster Feb 17 '16 at 19:33
  • @DirkHaupt : I never heard this before ... please use the up/down keys so that Try Ubuntu without installing is marked (highlighted) ... then press the E key ! :) – cl-netbox Feb 18 '16 at 10:03
  • Pressing the tab key worked. From there I was able to edit quiet splash to nomodeset and get in, install, and then when I installed the nvidia drivers I got this issue: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2283992 None of the solutions worked so I formatted everything and reinstalled Ubuntu and this time I installed WITH an internet connection and to my surprise just like that everything worked right after. I also checked and sure enough the laptop is using the nvidea card as a GPU. Moral of story: always install Ubuntu with an internet connection. – Frikster Feb 18 '16 at 19:34