doublethreatguy

Hello all,


I installed Ubuntu 7.04 onto my external hard drive at a friend's house. Installation went fine, and it worked perfectly on my friend's computer.

I get home, plug in my external hard drive into my computer, and Ubuntu wont boot. I get the following:

--[GRUB Loads]--

"Starting Up...
Loading, please wait..."

Following about 10 or so seconds of that, the screen goes blank. No writing, no nothing. Just blank.

I wait about 10-15 minutes, and nothing happens.

I also tried it on a laptop in my house, and it works perfectly on that. Therefore, it's only an issue on MY computer.

BUT... I have a Virtual Machine running off of my external hard drive, so I can use Ubuntu on top of Windows XP and it works fine -- I just can't boot it directly off of my external hard drive (by going to BIOS and booting from "USB Device.")

Also - My computer, for some odd reason, won't boot the Live CD. Or any boot-able CD, for that matter. So "try booting from the Live CD" suggestions wont work.

I also went into the GRUB menu and configured Ubuntu Recovery mode to boot with "ro single", meaning the Ubuntu logo doesnt show, instead, there is scrolling text. That didn't work - it did it's thing, then froze and did nothing.

I know there are some Ubuntu users out there - any ideas of what the problem could be?

TonyD

Sounds to me like it's some kind of video driver issue, but that it doesn't even show the text while booting kind of makes me wonder. It could also be some kind of hardware compatibility issue, but I really wouldn't be able to narrow it down for you.

This is what I would try:
Boot up, and give the computer a minute or two to do its thing. After you think it's had an adequate amount of time to boot, try pressing Ctrl + Alt + F1, to switch to text-only mode. If this works, you might be able to work around it. If this doesn't work, I don't really know what to tell you.

Assuming it is a video driver issue, type "sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf" (without quotes), and type in your password. I'm not sure how familiar you are with this file, but locate the area titled "Device," which will be your video card info. Under driver it will probably have "nv" if you installed it on a computer that has an nVidia chip. Many times this driver, at least in my experience, isn't always adequate. The driver "vesa" is usually a little more compatible, although not as "advanced." Try switching the driver to vesa.

* However, if your computer does have an nVidia card, it is probably a good idea to update with the latest proprietary driver. I'm not totally sure how to do this on 7.04, since I'm still using Dapper (6.06), but in Dapper it's as simple as "sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx" and making sure that the driver is set to "nvidia" in xorg.conf.

After you do that, Ctrl + Alt + F7 will switch you back to your default X server. Ctrl + Alt + Backspace will restart the X server using the updated xorg.conf file. Alternatively, while still on the text-only screen, type "sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart" to do the same thing. Hopefully this will help. If you haven't already, it might be a good idea to post this on the Ubuntu forums, as well.

doublethreatguy

It shows text when I do recovery mode w/ "ro single" fine. Is that what you mean?

The only text that shows when I attempt to boot is when GRUB loads and it says "Starting up.."

I'll try what you told me later.

And I hate the Ubuntu forums. Your thread gets covered by 5 pages in 3 hours, and your question never even gets read. It's too busy.

TonyD

Does it boot up to a text-only screen in recovery mode? Or is it a blank screen, also? I forgot about recovery mode, since I've only had to use it a few times. Using this to get to a command prompt will work just as well.

doublethreatguy

Yes, text only. Scrolling, white text. Then it gives me some kind of "Boot I/O" errors at the end, then it does nothing.

So I can boot in recovery mode with the white text just fine, it just can't completely boot.

TonyD

I'm confused... It boots completely into recovery mode, ending with a login prompt? Or it scrolls the text and then screws up?

If you can log in, try what I suggested above. If it doesn't allow you to log on, I'm really not sure what to say. The Boot I/O leads me to believe there is a hardware problem, and that you also have CD-rom problems, I think it might be a motherboard issue.

doublethreatguy

It scrolls the text and then freezes ("screws up").