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Running Ubuntu 16.04, graphics card: Geforce GTX 560

So when I turn on my computer, it goes through everything until it hits the black screen with the text "Loading Operating System". That text disappears, and then I get the black screen with the blinking cursor forever. So I hit "control-alt-delete" and select recovery mode. Once I get into that, I just select "go back to normal boot up" and everything is fine.

A week ago, something else happened.It wouldn't start up, and presented me with a wall of text on a black screen after the cryptsetup login. I tried writing some of it down, but I've no idea how I'd get access to what it wrote so I could post it in full here.

It started with: "FPDMA Queued Failed", "ata4:soft reset failed", and "revalidation failed". I also got a ton of lines about "Blk-update" errors, whatever that means. I saw something about that come up during other issues as well.

Just before this happened, I tried launching a game that I know works (and works perfectly fine now). But this one time, it told me I needed to update my graphics card drivers. So I said "ok" for it to do so, but nothing happened Then my system started performing poorly, so I tried restarting. That's when the failed cryptsetup login happened with the black text.

When I first installed Ubuntu earlier this year, I would enter my cryptsetup login password to be presented with a black screen instead of my main login page. It was a graphics card issue then as well. This issue is weirdly reminiscent of that.

I apparently have no idea how to prevent graphics card issues with this system. Could there be something else malfunctioning, or is it just the drivers/software for the graphics card?

A. Bergeron
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  • This user replaced hard drive, but later found it was power supply. https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2272486 If encrypted make sure you have good backups. ATA error may be a drive type issue. Have you run fsck and checked drive status? http://askubuntu.com/questions/642504/ubuntu-14-04-is-not-booting-normaly-after-a-manual-hard-boot/642789#642789 If you do update video drivers you must totally uninstall old one, before installing new one or else you have conflicts. New driver does not auto uninstall old one. – oldfred Nov 07 '16 at 13:58
  • Terminal just told me that if I run fsck now with the filesystem mounted, it would cause severe damage. – A. Bergeron Nov 07 '16 at 14:17
  • I'm glad to know it could potentially be the power supply instead of the graphics card. I built this system 5 years ago now, and only cleaned out dust with compressed air once (sometime this past summer I think). Would that be long enough for a hardware failure to occur? – A. Bergeron Nov 07 '16 at 14:21
  • Link clearly states to use live installer, so everything is unmounted. Running fsck from mounted system can cause damage. Have you also checked drive status with Smart data? In Disks, click on icon in upper right and use Smart Data. It can run tests, but I do not know details other than good/bad summary. – oldfred Nov 07 '16 at 15:41
  • Sorry, I'm still new to this, but want to know how to control my system inside & out, so I'm going to try all the things and learn all the things. Disks says "SMART is not enabled" for both my main and spare drives. I'm not sure what that means. My main drive is an SSD by the way.

    Also, what is live installer? Google tells me it's for Windows, but I only have Linux.

     – A. Bergeron Nov 07 '16 at 16:27
  • Windows is not a live installer. A live installer works as both a working "live" system as well as an installer. When you boot Ubuntu you get multiple choices like install or use as live system which is good for repairs. Windows is only an installer, perhaps Windows PE is considered a live system? Do not know Windows. I am very surprised any newer drive is not Smart enabled??? That has been default for many years before SSDs even. Is system BIOS/UEFI using AHCI for drives, not old IDE nor RAID? – oldfred Nov 07 '16 at 16:58
  • I don't care about Windows right now, though I might pick up another Hard Drive for Windows for gaming. My motherboard from gigabyte: GA-990FXA-UD3/GA-990FXA-UD3, BIOS F5, with AHCI. So a live installer should be a boot option? As in insert the USB with my OS on it, and boot from that? – A. Bergeron Nov 07 '16 at 17:14
  • A lot of Gigabyte boards in that series need IOMMU settings. Some Gigabyte boards need acpi=off boot parameter also GIGABYTE GA-970A-DS3 motherboard not working with 64 bit kernel - IOMMU GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="iommu=soft" http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2111223&page=5 and http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2292025 and http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2242023 – oldfred Nov 07 '16 at 18:04
  • So I enabled SMART data, it says the disk is OK, with 1 bad sector. Don't know what that means? One bad core maybe?

    I've tried everything else in those links I think. Nothing has changed. I can list the result of "dmesg" in terminal if it would help, but it is a lot of code.

     – A. Bergeron Jan 20 '17 at 16:02

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