Installed Ubuntu onto a brand new 1tb hard drive and I get a dark blue screen

[SBTlauien]

-AMD Athlon 64 bit with NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 and a brand new 1tb hard drive
-Not dual booting
-Same PC runs Windows XP on a different hard drive
-Only had in the 1tb hard drive while installing

I installed Ubuntu from a DVD(the md5 matched), then took out the DVD and restarted my PC after the install(as instructed). *Once Ubuntu booted, I was able to login on the login screen, but afterwards, it gave me a pure dark blue screen that had a movable cursor, and the cursor changed at certain parts of the screen.

I pressed ALT-CNTRL-DEL and the screen change to a pure white screen.

Can anyone help me get Ubuntu working?

Sorry if this is in the wrong section.

[mips]

Probably a video driver issue.

[SBTlauien]

Do you know how I can fix that?

[grahammechanical]

What did the log in screen look like? Your reference to a dark blue screen after log in is a puzzle to me. Are you sure you installed Ubuntu and not Ubuntu Gnome? Ubuntu has a default purple and orange swirl for a background image for the log in screen and that continues onto the desktop until we set a background image of our choice in System Settings>Appearance.

Do you get a Grub boot menu? If not try holding down the Shift key as the machine loads. At the Grub boot menu select Advanced Options for Ubuntu ( I am assuming that you are using 12.10 or 13.04 - you do not tell us - not my fault if the instructions are wrong) and select Recovery Mode. At the Recovery Mode screen select Resume. That will sometimes get us to a desktop that works.

From there you need to load System Settings and open Software & Updates and go to the Additional Drivers tab and experiment with different video drivers. Give the utility a few seconds to gather it list together.

I think that you have installed Ubuntu Gnome and I cannot direct you on how to change video drivers on Ubuntu Gnome as I have not tried that for about six months.

Regards.

[SBTlauien]

Thank you so much.

So, is holding down the shift key to get this Grub menu basically the same as pressing F8/F10 in Windows to get the menu with safe mode?

[oldfred]

If you have Windows on another drive and after you get system working. Run this.
sudo update-grub

Then you will always get grub menu as you will have the option to boot Ubuntu or Windows.

I have an older nVidia card and have to use nomodeset on first boot after an install. But you have to get to grub menu, press e to edit boot stanza, scroll down to linux line and replace quiet splash with nomodeset.

Screens shown here:
How to set NOMODESET and other kernel boot options in grub2
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1613132
BIOS live installer Boot Options
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootOptions

[SBTlauien]

I'm running 13.04, not sure if I'm running Gnome, but I'm quit sure it was the full install 64 bit download.

The 'Additional Drivers' tab in 'Software & Updates', is empty. I am connect to the internet.

It only seems to boot through the Grub menu, and it seems slow.

It shows 'VESA: NV35 Board - p172-1n' as my graphics driver, but I'm assuming it's not loading when I boot this way, and it's what's causing this issue. But I'm not sure.

[SBTlauien]

Alright, did just as you said, and I get the nice boot menu(I also have a 1.55gb hard drive with Windows 98 lol), changed it to 'NOMODESET', and it boots, but it still seems really slow.

I also got an error message.

[SBTlauien]

Actually, it still gives me a pure blank screen but I'm able to move my cursor. This time it was white until I pressed CNTRL-ALT-DEL, then it turned black. The cursor can be moved around though.

It did load when I choose those suggested options, but just slow.

[sandyd]

moved to absolute beginners section