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View Full Version : [ubuntu] 11.04 - Booting to Blank Screen, and Document Recovery through Trial Disk



aga021
September 24th, 2013, 09:45 AM
I use Ubuntu Linux 11.04 (Natty Narwahl). A few days ago the computer crashed and needed to be hard reset. After this, it enters the Grub loader every time I try to boot, and whether I select Ubuntu or Recovery Mode, only boots as far as the blank purple screen, with no cursor.

Following instructions in other threads I have tried editing in the Grub loader, changing "quiet splash" to "nomodeset." On a seperate occasion, I tried adding xforcevesa to the end of the code. Neither made any difference.

Can anybody offer any suggestions?

My second question is this:
Since this problem started I have run a Linux Mint 15 trial disk on the same computer (don't have Narwahl disk, but do have the possibility of making one if this helps). Through this I have permission to open/copy/upload about 1/3 of the documents on my Ubuntu hard drive, though there seems to be no pattern as to which. The hard drive was not encrypted. If there is a way to gain access to these files and copy them onto a USB stick or upload them through the trial, then I'm happy to format the computer instead. Does anybody know if this is possible?

Thank-you

oldos2er
September 24th, 2013, 06:01 PM
Through this I have permission to open/copy/upload about 1/3 of the documents on my Ubuntu hard drive, though there seems to be no pattern as to which.

Sounds like it could be a failing hard disk. If possible I would run smartctl (from the smartmontools (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Smartmontools) package) from a Live environment to verify that.
Also take a look at photorec (http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec).

I assume you know that both Ubuntu 11.04 and 11.10 are no longer supported.