ubunt 12.04 black screen

[Siedas]

Hello, sorry in advanced if this becomes frustrating.

The problem is this. After booting, I get a black screen. This started happening after I got some upgrades.

I have been told this is due to lightdm not working correctly.

Not sure if this is completely true since I did had a similar issue with another laptop with windows 7.

 

[Megatron]

Well with Windows it could have been the dreaded Black Screen of Death. But since Linux, Ubuntu in this case, doesnt fall under the same situations I would say that the issues are not similar.

Are you able to do anything at all? Like open up terminal or anything? Maybe see if you can use the Ubuntu LiveCD and se if you can force lightdm to start?

 

[Siedas]

Yes, I have a live usb and I can access the Terminal.

 

[Megatron]

I am not exactly sure how it can be done. But I am sure that Jayce our resident Ubuntu Expert can give some guidance on the subject.

 

[Jayce]

While booting the system, once it hits the Grub menu and passes boot instructions onto Ubuntu, hit the F12 key. The F12 key will toggle the boot screen. By default, you will see a simple purple background image, but toggling the F12 key will send you into text mode, where you can see each individual service starting up. You might be able to catch where it hangs to get some more insight on the issue.

Likewise, let's say you can get the system fired up and it's just a black screen. Okay, fine. Hit CTRL ALT F1. This *should* drop you to a TTY session, aka a terminal only screen. If you can get here, you'll see a terminal login prompt. Log in with the same username/password as you would typically use in the regular GUI mode. Then try starting the lightdm service for the login screen by running:

sudo service lightdm start

If this gives you an error that it's already running, try substituting 'start' with 'restart'.

 

[Siedas]

Thanks. I tried all that, including re-installing it. Now I am back to the black screen.

This time it was because I attempted to install a bamboo tablet pen and touch ([all variants] HOW TO Set Up the Bamboo Pen & Touch in Lucid) and after following the instructions, I got a another black screen.

 

[Jayce]

Thanks. I tried all that, including re-installing it. Now I am back to the black screen.

This time it was because I attempted to install a bamboo tablet pen and touch ([all variants] HOW TO Set Up the Bamboo Pen & Touch in Lucid) and after following the instructions, I got a another black screen.

So your system runs absolutely fine each and every time UNTIL you install this software? That's strange... I see you're running 12.04... and there's a 12.04 specific section to that guide...

 

[Tehporp]

It's possible that the driver is the issue, can you expand on what graphic card you're using? If you're using Nvidia graphic card, then I would recommend trying either Noveau driver or Nvidia driver.