Ubuntu 11.10 not booting but showing Purple Screen

[therealankit]

I upgraded Ubuntu 11.04 to 11.10 yesterday, upgradation went fine. It even restarted properly and i liked what i briefly saw in the new Ubuntu. After that i shut it down. Next day when i started my Laptop, Ubuntu didn't boot and showed only a Purple Screen of death . I restarted it many times but with no success. As nothing is on the screen, i can't do anything. Hope someone provide me any idea what to do about it.

Details-
Laptop- Dell N5010 15R
Processor- Intel Core i5 64bit
On dual boot with Windows 7 Ultimate

[effenberg0x0]

Reboot your PC
Hold the shift key, in order to reveal the Grub boot menu
In Grub, select the recovery option (generally the second one)
In a few moments, recovery will ask you what to do. Select a root shell.
when you are the console prompt, type the following command

mount -o rw,remount /
nano /etc/default/grub

Inside the nano editor, use the keyboard arrow keys to navigate and locate this line. Edit it to make it look like this. Remove any instance of the word "quiet" and "splash" from this or other line in this file.

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="text"

Press Ctrl+X, Y and <Enter> when you're done editing, to save the file and exit.
Now update grub with this command:

update-grub

And reboot your system

reboot now

You *should* have no purple screen, as we have disabled plymouth. That means we will be able to see text messages that will let us know what is going on with your setup.

This system *will not* boot up to a desktop yet, unfortunately. You'll be again at a console prompt.

If the system is not asking for your user/password, switch to another VT using Ctrl+Alt+F1 to F6

sudo service lightdm start

See if the command above does get you to lightdm and to a graphical session.
Use Ctrl+Alt+F1 to F6 to get back to the VT you were using in case all you see is a text screen after the command above.

I'll soon ask you what Video Card you have. If you don't know the answer to that, take the opportunity to run this command:

lspci | grep -i vga

If you are not presented with the option of using your user/password to login at the console, take note of the last text messages you see on your screen and please report them back here, so we can continue.

Regards,
Effenberg

[bilodeau]

I was having similar problems after I did a fresh install of Ubuntu 11.10 today. During the install, running from the CD, everything was great. I reboot, and after selecting the default boot option during GRUB, I get nothing but a flashing light purple screen.

I rebooted a couple of times after this, but got the same problem - flashing light purple screen.

I rebooted into "safe mode" and edited the file /etc/default/grub, commenting out the line with "quiet splash" and adding a replacement with "text" instead. I rebooted, selected the normal default, and now have an operational system with graphical login and full desktop environment. I didn't have to do anything else.

I have rebooted a few times since changing the file, and get the same fully functional behavior, so it appears that the tweak to the /etc/default/grub file was all I needed.

Is there any more information I should post to better enable people to track down the source of this strange error?

[quiela]

Hi, I modified the grub , and I reboot my system, when I use the code

sudo service lightdm star

I got that service is already running.

I also cannot boot in the older version.

Thanks for the help

[techvish81]

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1866512

[Jon1001]

I had the same problem. Here's my fix:

- Hold shift while it's booting up to access the GRUB menu
- Press e to edit the boot options
- Where it says "quiet splash", add noapic so it looks like this: "quiet splash noapic"
- Press Ctrl+x to boot

If this works, let me know and I'll tell you how to make it permanent. Otherwise you'll have to do that every time you boot.

Jon

[wchigdon]

Thank you!

This is my first Ubuntu load and I am loving it.(very new) I tried the suggestions and it works to a point. when I reboot, the system wants to hang up after this text:

[43.070429] sr 1:0:1:0 Attached scsi generic sg3 type 5


I then type in exit at the prompt

it then takes me to an 8 bit screen where I can select reboot system.

I then can get into the Ubuntu 11.10 and I LOVE IT!

Be so kind as to help me with this process.

Thank you for your efforts.

[oggyjac]

Hi there,
yesterday i installed ubuntu 11.10 32bit within windows 7 using wubi. it went very well. also used it for a day.next day when i started laptop ubuntu started showing purple screen on bootin. it shows grub boot menu but nothing happens on selectin any option.only purple screen appears.
i tried above mentioned steps of editin boot options but didnt work for me . also when i open it in recovery mode it shows message sumthin lik "loading initial ramdisk.." but nothin happens then.
Plz provide hlp..

details
dell inspiron 1545 n series
intel core 2 duo
dual boot with windows 7 32bit

[RyanDM1776]

[QUOTE]Reboot your PC
Hold the shift key, in order to reveal the Grub boot menu
In Grub, select the recovery option (generally the second one)
In a few moments, recovery will ask you what to do. Select a root shell.
when you are the console prompt, type the following command[QUOTE]

I found this forum hopefully just in time!
I recently built a new PC,
Intel core i5 processor
8GB DDR3 ram
Asus P8z68-v lx mobo
older Nvidia Quadro FX video card with 512mb ram

I wanted to install the 64bit Ubuntu 11.10 on it so that I can run vmware workstation and be able to run various vm's that are W7, etc.

Secondly, I want to be able to run GNS3 on it.

Well, the install went fine, but it did hang and get that Purple screen, which sat for more than 15 minutes. I had to reboot 6 times before I could get a logon screen, and then when it wanted to download more drivers, it froze.

Is it incompatable, or what is happening? I need a way out because class starts in 2 days!
I finally got to the grub editor. When it began the reboot, I get one fail:

initctl: Even failed
*Starting load fallback graphics devices [fail] -----------> does that mean the graphics card is shot?
otherwise, all is [ok]
it appears to be ckecking slowly for each subsequent device.

[Antonio Oliva]

Reboot your PC
Hold the shift key, in order to reveal the Grub boot menu
In Grub, select the recovery option (generally the second one)
In a few moments, recovery will ask you what to do. Select a root shell.
when you are the console prompt, type the following command

mount -o rw,remount /
nano /etc/default/grub

Inside the nano editor, use the keyboard arrow keys to navigate and locate this line. Edit it to make it look like this. Remove any instance of the word "quiet" and "splash" from this or other line in this file.

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="text"

Press Ctrl+X, Y and <Enter> when you're done editing, to save the file and exit.
Now update grub with this command:

update-grub

And reboot your system

reboot now

You *should* have no purple screen, as we have disabled plymouth. That means we will be able to see text messages that will let us know what is going on with your setup.

This system *will not* boot up to a desktop yet, unfortunately. You'll be again at a console prompt.

If the system is not asking for your user/password, switch to another VT using Ctrl+Alt+F1 to F6

sudo service lightdm start

See if the command above does get you to lightdm and to a graphical session.
Use Ctrl+Alt+F1 to F6 to get back to the VT you were using in case all you see is a text screen after the command above.

I'll soon ask you what Video Card you have. If you don't know the answer to that, take the opportunity to run this command:

lspci | grep -i vga

If you are not presented with the option of using your user/password to login at the console, take note of the last text messages you see on your screen and please report them back here, so we can continue.

Regards,
Effenberg

Hi Effenberg
I followed your instructions but now I am in a worse situation than before.
After following all your steps without problems, I got up to "reboot now" and then nothing happened.
Now when I try to enter to the Grub boot menu, the SHIFT key does not work as before, I just go straight to the purple dead screen.