Ubuntu :: Desktop Fails To Boot After New 10.10 Install?
May 1, 2011
Recently I installed Ubuntu 10.10 on a desktop I use on occasion. It is a Dell Dimension E510. It was running on Windows XP(?) and I think ours dates back to around 2005 or 2007, but I can't say so with certainty.
Anyway, let's say it was about ten days ago when I installed. Everything worked fine and was great. But now the computer won't boot and I'm at a total loss of where I should go from here.
To summarize what happens: Basically I hit the power button and can hear the machine turn on (the monitor's power button is stuck on, so it's already powered), but the screen just stays dark.
I've done a slight amount of research and tested to see if it was the CPU behind it, and if removing any external devices would help (which I'm still not sure if it isn't the culprit) to no avail. My younger sister uses the computer almost exclusively for charging her iPod - which in that case may be related. I'm curious if anyone knows other methods to get around the possibility of it being a CPU problem just in case.
The last version a Linux I had was Mandrake v9.1. However, in looking to get the latest/greatest Linux I downloaded Ubuntu and Kubuntu. After installing Kubuntu the system reboots and fails to boot into the OS. After the P.O.S.T all I get a the word "GRUB". There is no response to any keys with the exception of Ctrl-Alt-Del. I am temporarily able to get passed the boot problem if I boot from the CD and choose boot from primary hard menu option. I'm not sure how to fix the boot up problem and could use some advice. However, using the CD to boot up the hard drives installation leads me to my next problem.
While in a desktop session I am unable to drag windows by their title bar. When attempting to drag a window, the desktop becomes covered with parts of the original window spreading all over the screen in multiple directions. It looks like a kaleidoscope or bad acid trip image. I suspect the video anomalies might be configuration related or improper driver. Again guidance would be greatly appreciated here.
I have a good 'ole Matrox MGA Millenium card installed into a P4 1.8ghz system, with 512 MB ram. The hard drive originally had an old install of Mandrake v9.1, but all of the partitions were wiped and I created 3 new partitions:
- /dev/sda1 20GB Bootable/Primary Partition EXT4 (Unbuntu mounted at /) - /dev/sda2 18GB Primary EXT4 (Kubuntu mounted at /mnt/Ubuntu_dsktop_91) - /dev/sda3 2GB Swap space
My intent was to install Ubuntu on the 2nd primary partition and be able to switch between them. However, I tried installed Ubuntu on the first partition (reformatted of course) and I encounter the same boot problem and display problem.
Right after selecting [Install Ububtu] / [Try live CD], I get this message and the system freezes. The same message appears when trying to install Ubuntu from VMWare Player or booting from a CD instead of a USB stick. Has anyone else experienced the same?Processor Intel Celeron 900 Mainboard:Acer BA50-MVBios:Phoenix V1.3311Chipset:Intel GL40Video Card :Mobile Intel(R) 4 Series Express Chipset FamilyHard Disk :Western Digital WD1600BEVT-22ZCT0 ATA Device (160GB)My old HP Pavilion boots and installs Ubuntu 10.10 just fine from the same USB stick. I have tried both 32bit and 64bit editions with same results.
I have Vista on my Samsung R60 + and have installed Ubuntu. On start up I get the dual boot option, select Ubuntu which then goes to completeing install etc, get some HD activity then nothing.
Recently freshly reinstalled ubuntu 10.04 on a new / blank hard drive and it now crashes on startup. Quick version: I have a nvidia Quadro NVS 295, it gets to the point just after the bios with the flashing dash, seemingly tries to init xserver / gdm then crashes. Keyboard lights go off but the pc stays on, and just sits there with the monitor in power saving mode. Tried in recovery mode, the blue / grey ascii terminal thing pops up for less then a second then the display crashes in the same way.
Swapping with an ATI card borrowed from elsewhere, the new install will boot quite happily. Anyone know how I can get 10.04 to boot with a nvidia quadro NVS 295? Its a bog standard card and my version of 10.04 I upgraded to on my old hard drive works fine. ts a reasonably new dell XPS 64bit pc.
Longer version: I run 3 monitors using a PCI-e x16 NVS 295 and a PCI NVS 295. This worked great under 9.10 and 10.04. Boss gave me a solid state HD so trying to install 10.04 on that. However on my first install attempt the live CD failed to load (same problem as above, gets to init'ing the display and crashes with no output). I removed the second PCI card to run with just the 1 PCI-e x16 nvidia card, this time the live CD worked fine and I could install, but I am stuck on the boot problem. Booted into the system using the ATI card and did an update just incase something may have changes / been fixed but the issue persists.
I had to install grub manually after the install. GRUB loads fine and I can select the Ubuntu option, but it simply stays on a purple screen with no HDD activity. When I go into recovery, it falls to a busybox command-line and says "ALERT! /dev/disk/by-uuid/(string of letters and numbers) does not exist". I use a RAID array which causes me loads of problems, but I'm fairly sure, from what I've read of similar problems, that this is due to the update it did during installation. I suppose I could try installing it without internet connection, but then presumably the same thing would happen as soon as I ran update-manager? I have actually tried the reinstall several times as well as reinstalling GRUB.
I'm using the RAID1 setup, which is configured in the BIOS, as it is a HP Proliant server. i have 2 500GB hard drives configured in a mirror. when booting the install, it recognises this, and deals with it fine.
The problem is, when it gets to the section of installing the grub2 boot loader, it just stops and gives me the "ubuntu installer main menu" where if i select grub boot loader install it just loops back, and if i select LILO installer, it errors, saying an installation step failed.
It has the option to skip installing boot loader, but then, can i get it to boot a different way? can i boot manually into the server install and then install GRUB and hope it works? can i install grub1 rather than grub2?
Downloaded Ubuntu 10.04.1 Desktop AMD64, tried to install it to a cleand HDD using the whole HDD, i.e. gave it permission to use the whole HDD. Installation process appeared to run OK but when it came to the restart it just fired up the message error: out of disk grub rescue>
I've searched this forum and found numerous references to these error messages but cannot make head nor tail of the diagnostic suggestions. Apart from anything else they suggest strings of command lines which I don't understand and can't enter anyway since they don't correspond to my keyboard layout (if I hit > or ) something completely different appears on the screen). Is there someone here who can provide a step-by-step solution in lay language? Or is there such a thing as a bootable file which can be downloaded and inserted into my CD drive to correct this problem?
When I ran the distribution upgrade from 9.04 in update manager, my screen went blank on reboot and will not recover. Every time I reboot, screen goes blank. I cannot press CTRL-ALT F1 - F6 to gain access to text shells.
I tested booting from the 9.04 live CD and it works fine. So I downloaded the 9.10 live cd on another computer and booted it on the disabled system. Same exact problem on the live CD that I had upon installation: on boot screen goes black and cannot access text shells.
What can I do next to get out of this short of going back to 9.04, which has problems that I do not want to live with?
I was planning on installing Stretch on my iBook G4. So I got my netinst cd and went through the install process. Everything was fine till I got to the section where I selected my mirrors. I chose the US/ftp.debian.org mirror and it failed so I tried the ftp.kernel.org and that failed as well. Then I tried the third on the list and I was able to connect and get my packages. The install completed, however when I rebooted the bootup froze. So I thought that it could my cd so I went and grabbed the latest stretch iso from the site.
Yet again I ran into issues. The biggest was that I kept getting sent back to install menu to manually select what steps I wanted to do. I found this odd since normally the install will just walk you through. Then I ran into the same issues with mirrors. finally the install completed and I was rebooted. However the boot failed again, but this I got dropped into the initramfs shell. Should I file this as bug with the debain-installer package?
I have sevral older machines that cannot boot from usb. Until now I have installed fedora using the provided boot.iso on a CD and an external USB dvd drive with the full install DVD.
With Fedora 11, this fails. It gets as far as "finding storage devices" and fails, telling me that an unhandled exception has occured. It offers to save the details, but freezes looking for a suitable location. I have no such problems with the same DVD/external rw drive on systems that can boot directly from usb.
I just fresh installed openSuse 11.3. Am trying to install Hupervisor and Tools but during the install I get the message that xen itself can't be installed while it needs 20MB space.My boot partition is already maxed. At least that is what the partitioner is telling me that 70MB is the maximum setting.
I was running openSUSE 11.2 on a Dell Studio with a mirrored disk. The upgrade to 11.3 went well it seemed until it got to the point of installing the new bootloader. Then it couldn't mount /boot. Otherwise it seemed to go OK though.It completed and rebooted. I see a very brief flash of the word GRUB on the reboot, but then the screen blanks and I get the BIOS messages again.How can I now install GRUB so that I can boot. I had a similar issue with 11.2 in the past, and was able to repair GRUB using 11.2's DVD's "Repair Installation" which had tools to reinstall GRUB.11.3's DVD is missing this option.I'd prefer not to do a fresh install as then I will have a lot of OS setup to repeat (Samba, Apache, Trac, etc.....)
I've just installed debian to a thumb drive on a system with no hard drives. I did not install any hard drive to avoid confusion. The installation went well, I rebooted the system several times with no issues until I decided to install the hard drive (SATA drive). After I installed the hard drive the system failed to boot showing something like:
Code: Decompressing Linux... Parsing ELF... done. Booting the kernel. Loading, please wait... mount: mounting /dev/sda1 on /root failed: No such device (continues for other partitions and mount points) Target filesystem doesn't have /sbin/init No init found. Try passing init=bootarg
BusyBox v1.10.2 (Debian 1:1.10.2-2) built-in shell (ash) /bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off (initramfs) [9.670347] sd 0:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through [9.673805] sd 0:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through (some insignificant text was not copied :P)
I am guessing that the new disk is somehow confusing debian regarding where to look for system files or the address where the devices are located because if I remove the data cable from the hard drive the system reboots correctly (no hard drive though). Hotpluging the drive works but once I reboot it happens again.
Downloaded Ubuntu 10.04.1 Desktop AMD64, tried to install it to a cleand HDD using the whole HDD, i.e. gave it permission to use the whole HDD. Installation process appeared to run OK but when it came to the restart it just fired up the message
error: out of disk grub rescue>
I've searched this forum and found numerous references to these error messages but cannot make head nor tail of the diagnostic suggestions. Apart from anything else they suggest strings of command lines which I don't understand and can't enter anyway since they don't correspond to my keyboard layout (if I hit > or ) something completely different appears on the screen). Is there someone here who can provide a step-by-step solution in lay language ? Or is there such a thing as a bootable file which can be downloaded and inserted into my CD drive to correct this problem ?
I'm using OpenSUSE 11.4, trying to install to an iSCSI partition. I'm using gPXE to boot to my iSCSI volume. This works fine, and pulls up grub with my boot options. I think boot the openSUSE 11.4 entry, which kicks off the boot process. I see the steps for running DHCP on the interface, but when it gets to iscsiadm, there's an error logging in to the iSCSI target portal along the lines of "15 - already exists. After that things start to fall apart - I/O errors, mainly, and the system completely fails to boot. What's going on and what this already exists message means?
I recently purchased a new Lenovo Thinkpad T420i and am having problems installing the latest version of Squeeze from CD. After receiving the laptop, I started it up, configured Windows 7, and confirmed everything is working correctly. Next I went through the Debian installer, which completed successfully. I'll be dual-booting Windows 7 and Debian, so at the partitioning stage I resized my NTFS partition, added a shared VFAT partition, then used the "Guided" install to create my root and swap partitions. My partition layout is code...
I assumed something was wrong with grub, so I booted the CD into rescue mode and chose to reinstall grub onto the Master Boot Record. But nothing changed. Just to experiment, I went into fdisk, deleted all my new partitions (leaving just the Windows ones), and tried rebooting, but the same error happened. I then went through the Debian installer again, being careful to set everything up correctly, but still, the device won't boot.
I'm not even getting to the grub boot screen, so something is wrong even before the point. Reinstalling grub to the Master Boot Record (grub-install /dev/sda) isn't changing anything. How can I troubleshoot this?
I am attempting a Network installation of openSuse 11.3 on an old desktop which has IBM Boot Manager so that I can boot to one of three OSs, openSuse being the third. Sadly the installation of openSuse fails before the CD initial boot has finished. Looking at the text log of the starting process the problem appears to be a driver and the last line of text where it stalls refers to eata driver.
There are 4 hard drives in the machine, configured as two RAID 1 arrays driven by a DPT 2144W hardware raid card. (Very old but very good). If I Google eata I get a good deal on SCSI raid and DPT cards but I am out of my depth when they say a kernel module is needed.
Another concern is that the RAID arrays are configured using a bootable DOS configuration disk and once this is done they are recognized by other OSs such as eCS and OS/2. The arrays are just treated as single drives so these OS installations do not interfere with the card configuration. I am concerned because I cannot afford to lose the data on the drives but it appears the linux driver might want to rebuild the arrays.
I hope I'm posting in the right forum for this (since Scientific Linux is based on RHEL)...I downloaded the Scientific Linux 5.4 "Boron" Install DVD's, and I can't get the DVD to boot. It gets to the point where it tries to initialize SMP (I have a Core 2 Quad Q8200 processor), and it just crashes and reboots my computer. I've tried disabling ACPI, APIC and APM using the noacpi, no apic, and apm=off options, one at a time, and all 3 at once (since the problem seems to be with APIC, because it fails to initialize on all 4 of the processor cores)...does anyone know what I'm doing wrong here, or how I can fix this? I really want to run Scientific Linux, but I can't since it crashes.
I've successfully downloaded openSUSE-11.4(64-bit) ISO image from the openSUSE site,and burned the ISO image successfully into 2 DVD's separately using Nero(ver.7) But I am unable to boot up from the DVD. When I pop in the DVD into my DVD-writer,a few seconds go by with the blinking cursor,and eventually boots off to Windows.The BIOS setting of my machine has been enabled to boot from CD/DVD first before HDD. No error messages are shown while I try to boot. The burned ISO image file is O.K. as it gets successfully verified after writing on the DVD. The image file {openSUSE-11.4 (64-bit)}being 4.29GB in size
when I booted Jaunty from the LiveCD, the desktop background to my Hardy install showed for a couple of seconds before the screen cleared and put the Jaunty desktop on there.This isn't really a problem, but I was curious as to why it happened (something like it has happened before with other versions, not always booting from CD IIRC) and just wondered if anyone could shed any light on it?
My laptop is a Core 2 Centrino and i installed OpenSUSE 11.3 i586 on it recently. I tried to install the graphic card's driver using this instruction:ATI Installer HOWTO for openSUSE usersafter installation was done, i restarted the system but during the boot, where the openSUSE appears, the screen went black and nothing happened afterward untill i turned of the system manually.i tried again and same result, so i logged in with failsafe and un-installed those packages, now the system boots successfully, but it boots to the terminal instead of the desktop. i might have removed the X server package or something important.now that i have access to terminal and i can log in, i thought i can do something with it and solve it this way rather than re-installing the whole OS.he graphic card is :ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570, if anyone knows how to the driver for this card, please let me know how to.
My laptop is a Core 2 Centrino and i installed OpenSUSE 11.3 i586 on it recently. I tried to install the graphic card's driver using this instruction: ATI Installer HOWTO for openSUSE users after installation was done, i restarted the system but during the boot, where the openSUSE appears, the screen went black and nothing happened afterward untill i turned of the system manually. i tried again and same result, so i logged in with failsafe and un-installed those packages, now the system boots successfully, but it boots to the terminal instead of the desktop. i might have removed the X server package or something important. now that i have access to terminal and i can log in, i thought i can do something with it and solve it this way rather than re-installing the whole OS.the graphic card is :
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570, if anyone knows how to the driver for this card, please let me know how to.
Last night I upgraded to Ubuntu 10.10 and ran into some problems. I can only work in the desktop GUI in safe mode, the regular Desktop environment loads up rarely. Here is some hardware info:
Toshiba Satellite L25-S1217 Intel Celeron 1.6 GHz RAM 874 MiB Available disk space 47.5 GiB
Now, here is the dmesg output....notice the errors at the bottom (Idon't know what they mean, but I suspect that xwindows is having trouble mounting)
I am building a 10.04.1LTS server. I am putting the /root filesystem into a Software RAID1 partition. I want to keeo my /boot partition outside of RAID.Is there a way to have a boot partition on both sda and sdb so if one drive fails the second boot partition will work away - or should this be kept in with RAID also.
I was upgrading our lab's dhcp server to Lucid and it totally died. I have it running on a Debian recovery cd right now. I ran into a bug in gtk which I seem to have fixed, but now I have more serious errors. If I boot without a CD, I get dumped into a busybox shell after the machine fails to boot. From the live CD, I tried dist-upgrading again and it dies trying to build and install rsyslog with a broken pipe error. I am at a loss as to what to do from here short of reinstalling (which is the last option as this server has a lot of custom configs on it)
after i have installed suse 11.4 on my acer m1300 my computer (desktop) won't auto boot. if i boot it manually my computer freezes. only if i boot it in revovery mode it continues with automatic confiration and it installs suse. but even than it won't reboot and i have to shutdown the hard way. when i restart the computer freezes and won't open opensuse.
After the recent upgrade to Lucid, my gnome session is working fine, but my kde session leaves much to be desired. Basically the plasma desktop is not showing up.
I am seeing plasma-desktop in synaptic unchecked and in the process of installing it.
Why was it removed in the first place and will it show up now?
I've just updated to 11.04 from 10.10.After restarting desktop does not startIt says [OK] for every command line, but nothing 'graphical' happensOn and other console I tried:
