9.10 to 10.04 blank white screen after GRUB2 screen.

[Jazzmaster94]

I just upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS from 9.10. After the upgrade process, I restarted and chose "Ubuntu, with [the current kernel]", and now I am greeted with a white screen with no login or boot splash. My processor is pegged according to the processor case light. My computer's specs are as follows: AMD Athlon X2 5200+, ATI Radeon X1300 Pro, 2GB DDR2 ram, Dell Socket AM2 Motherboard, and 250 GB 7200 RPM hard drive. I really need to get this computer to work, and I am fairly inexperienced with Linux, please help it is greatly appreciated.

[mörgæs]

The problem with upgrades is (among other things) that people don't get the option to boot the new version in a live session. That could have warned about upcoming problems.

Most likely the problem here is the ATI Radeon graphics card and the corresponding drivers. I can not give you a clear answer, since I don't have this card myself, but you could try googling for known problems as a first step.

[lokojones]

You have to load ubuntu in "recovery mode" (Select it when grub loads).
You will be asked what kind of boot you want, and what you want is a terminal session (with no X) to uninstall catalyst drivers. If you installed through Ubuntu's package manager, just do:

sudo apt-get remove fglrx*

Then:

sudo mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.backup

So that Xorg is able to make a clean version of the xorg.conf.

If this doesnt work, be sure to put xorg.conf where it was.

Good luck.

[Jazzmaster94]

The problem with upgrades is (among other things) that people don't get the option to boot the new version in a live session. That could have warned about upcoming problems.

Most likely the problem here is the ATI Radeon graphics card and the corresponding drivers. I can not give you a clear answer, since I don't have this card myself, but you could try googling for known problems as a first step.


You have to load ubuntu in "recovery mode" (Select it when grub loads).
You will be asked what kind of boot you want, and what you want is a terminal session (with no X) to uninstall catalyst drivers. If you installed through Ubuntu's package manager, just do:

sudo apt-get remove fglrx*

Then:

sudo mv /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.backup

So that Xorg is able to make a clean version of the xorg.conf.

If this doesnt work, be sure to put xorg.conf where it was.

Good luck.

I do not have a "modern" ATI Radeon card, the X1350 Pro is no longer supported past flgrx v9.3 and CCC v9.3. As such I have no use of the proprietary flgrx drivers. I am using the opensource X.org "radeon" driver. I am no longer able to boot into Ubuntu at all, the problem is no longer isolated to reboots. I noticed also that I do not have the loading splash screens before and after the login screen, as well as when shutting down I see the shutdown commands before the shutdown loading splash screen. In 9.10 I had no problem seeing the glowing Ubuntu logo. I noticed that there were some errors during the install that went by so quickly I don't have a complete list of what they were. Most were from Open Office not having the Java Virtual Machine, but some were splash screen installs that failed. Any ideas? :confused:

[mörgæs]

Maybe just reinstall 9.10. It is supported until april 2011, so you will have time to try both 10.10 and 11.04, before you must make a decision.

[Jazzmaster94]

Just finished a re-install and have been restoring several applications such as Realplayer 11 (for audio codecs, which it no longer shares codecs anymore), Chromium, Flash, and The GIMP. Just booted back in, and had the white screen again. Followed it up by a hard shut down and power up, which seems to have gone past the error. I'll watch it, but if I have issues again I will choose to go with openSUSE to see if it will handle my hardware better. I will now attempt another shut down and a reboot.

Update: Shut down, then power up works. Restart, then select Ubuntu 10.04 with current kernel yields the white screen. I have no idea why my computer does not work with Ubuntu 10.04. I love the interface and features, but the use of Debian Sid (or in this case, Debian Squeeze) just causes too many issues with my antiquated hardware. I will consider openSUSE 11.3 KDE (or GNOME), or perhaps Pardus (I've heard good things about it, except I think there's a lack of a mature repository system).

Again, I hate to leave Ubuntu, especially with it's ease of use when you get it working, but I just can't get my hardware to cooperate.

[mörgæs]

If you don't mind experimenting you could try 10.10 and see if this one supports the ATI cards better:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/

Remember that 10.10 is a work in progress, and that it might change without notice. You know the warnings...

[lokojones]

You could try to modify your boot line in your grub config, removing kernel mode setting, just to try.
Add "nomodeset" to your kernel boot line, and tell us if it helps at all.