Hey, all. I've been using Ubuntu off and on since 6.10, but I am definitely a noob when it comes to troubleshooting this kind of stuff. All of my previous installs went flawlessly, so I guess I've been lucky so far. I finally decided that I would bite the bullet, and remove Windows altogether. No more dual-boot with XP or 7 for me.
I've been attempting to install the 10.04 RC all weekend, and it's been pretty frustrating. I decided I would start with my aging laptop, a HP Pavilion ze8500 that I custom-ordered way back in 2003. A few specs I know off the top of my head:
P4 (2.30 GHz)
512MB RAM
40GB SATA HDD
I burned the ISO to CD-R and started the install. When I boot from the CD, I get a purple screen which is blank other than two symbols at the very bottom. IIRC, one looked like a ruler or something, and the other looked sort of like a star in a circle? I think they were separated by an equal sign.
I have no idea what that meant, but I knew enough to hit F6 and that got the install menu to appear onscreen. The only way I could get through the installer without losing video was to use 'nomodeset'
I installed over top of Windows 7 RC with the default partition table settings and after the install finished, I got the dialog box telling me that a restart is necessary. I hit Continue, the CD tray ejected, and my laptop restarted.
So, assuming that the installation was a success, I see the BIOS screen, and then that goes blank, and where I would expect to see a boot screen or a Grub dialog, I see nothing at all.
After the first install attempt, I would hear a drum sound after the screen went blank.
I tried hitting 'Esc', along with 'Ctrl+Alt+F1', 'Ctrl + Alt + F2' or whatever else I could think of, and nothing seems to work.
I updated my BIOS, remembering that I forgot to do that, and then I reinstalled Ubuntu. Again, no display when Ubuntu boots. And now, I hear no drum sound at all.
I am certain I was using an ATI video driver with Windows, but other than that, I don't know any specs on the display off the top of my head.
Am I doing something wrong, or does anyone have any suggestions? I'd really love to get this working so I can finally ditch Windows for good on my other two computers.
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