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I have recently upgraded my workstation from Ubuntu 14.04 to 16.04. After the upgrade, my computer is booting to black screen. The problem seem to be due to NVIDIA graphics card and its broken driver for ubuntu 16.04. I tried to follow instructions on Ubuntu 16.04 + Nvidia Driver = Blank screen, but I am not able to get to terminal window even after pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1/2 keys. Without getting to terminal I am not sure how can I update grub settings.

I am wondering if I can fix this problem somehow changing grub settings or do I really need to change to a non-NVIDIA graphics card ? Any help is highly appreciated. Following are my system details:

  1. Asus motherboard P8P67
  2. NVIDIA GeForce 1GB graphics card (specific model name I will update later)
  3. Wireless keyboard (not sure if this is important detail or not)
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Sachin
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1 Answers1

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You can edit the kernel boot parameters in Grub:

  1. Select a boot entry.

  2. Press E to edit it.

  3. Search and move the cursor to the line starting with linux. It should look similar to this:

    linux /boot/vmlinuz-4.4.0-62-generic root=UUID=404023ea-a6b2-4a92-a325-9488a106328c ro quiet splash

  4. Append a space and nomodeset to that line as suggested by this answer to your linked question (though the order of the arguments doesn't actually matter). Applied to the previous example the result may look like this:

    linux /boot/vmlinuz-4.4.0-62-generic root=UUID=404023ea-a6b2-4a92-a325-9488a106328c ro quiet splash nomodeset

    While you're at it you may also remove quiet and splash to show possible boot messages that may reveal more about the issue.

  5. Press Ctrl+X to boot the currently displayed boot entry.

This doesn't change isn't saved anywhere and only lasts until the next boot but it should allow you to render your system usable enough for further diagnosis and remedies, e. g. to edit the Grub configuration to make this change permanent as suggested in the linked question.

David Foerster
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  • Thanks David for the instructions to edit the boot entry, but I am just not able to get to the boot menu. I tried escape/shift/spacebar keys (http://askubuntu.com/questions/16042/how-to-get-to-the-grub-menu-at-boot-time) to enter the boot menu but I still get to blank screen after the grub loads. How can I get over this hurdle? – Sachin Feb 07 '17 at 14:21
  • @Sachin: That leads a bit far away from the question at hand (and I have no experience with that). I recommend that you open a new question asking for advice on how to activate the Grub menu and describing what you tried (possibly referring to the linked question). There's also I can't get grub menu to show up during boot that may be of help, in particular this answer about UEFI/legacy boot. – David Foerster Feb 07 '17 at 22:56