Re: [ubuntu-uk] Two questions: 64bit live USB problem and dual boot with recovery partition
On 17 August 2011 16:08, James Morrissey morrissey.jam...@gmail.com wrote: In the end i went with the 32 bit version. I tried installing 64 bit 10.04 (which worked) and auto-upgrading but the system hung (after about half and hour) when upgrading to 10.10. I have posted something on launchpad. Please post a link to the bug to help anyone finding this thread. Colin -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Two questions: 64bit live USB problem and dual boot with recovery partition
Sure, https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/168297 Need to get back to the reply, will do so when i get home from work this evening. j On 18 August 2011 08:14, Colin Law clan...@googlemail.com wrote: On 17 August 2011 16:08, James Morrissey morrissey.jam...@gmail.com wrote: In the end i went with the 32 bit version. I tried installing 64 bit 10.04 (which worked) and auto-upgrading but the system hung (after about half and hour) when upgrading to 10.10. I have posted something on launchpad. Please post a link to the bug to help anyone finding this thread. Colin -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/ -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Two questions: 64bit live USB problem and dual boot with recovery partition
In case this helps anyone, i stumbled on a way to get this working. Process is posted on the launchpad page. https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/168297/+index j On 18 August 2011 09:53, James Morrissey morrissey.jam...@gmail.com wrote: Sure, https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/168297 Need to get back to the reply, will do so when i get home from work this evening. j On 18 August 2011 08:14, Colin Law clan...@googlemail.com wrote: On 17 August 2011 16:08, James Morrissey morrissey.jam...@gmail.com wrote: In the end i went with the 32 bit version. I tried installing 64 bit 10.04 (which worked) and auto-upgrading but the system hung (after about half and hour) when upgrading to 10.10. I have posted something on launchpad. Please post a link to the bug to help anyone finding this thread. Colin -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/ -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Two questions: 64bit live USB problem and dual boot with recovery partition
In the end i went with the 32 bit version. I tried installing 64 bit 10.04 (which worked) and auto-upgrading but the system hung (after about half and hour) when upgrading to 10.10. I have posted something on launchpad. Thanks for the input and well done on getting the LoCo team re-approved. j On 16 August 2011 16:47, James Morrissey morrissey.jam...@gmail.com wrote: Neil, thanks again. [snip] Yes, this is the editing bit I referred to. Move to the 'Try Ubuntu...' option but press 'e' instead of 'Enter'. This changes to a different screen which displays several lines and similar e/c/Enter options at the bottom. Move to the line that starts 'linux' and press 'e' again. Delete the word(s) 'quiet' and/or 'splash' from the end of the line, then press Enter several times until your machine starts booting (I think it's 3 times, but I'm not sure). Hopefully, your machine will then boot successfully! If it fails, hopefully it will display an error about what caused the failure... There are also the ACPI/APCI/etc. options that might be causing the boot failure. There are 5-10 different options you can add instead of the 'quiet splash' that disable various checks that could be causing the boot to hang. But that will depend on what you see when you try my suggestion. After hitting 'e' at the original GRUB screen, i get a screen with the following at the bottom: Minimum Emacs - like screen editing is supported. TAB lists completions. Press Ctrl-x or F10 to boot, Ctrl-c or F2 for a command line or ESC to discard edits and return to the GRUB menu. This screen has nothing about editing etc. like there was on the first GRUB menu. On this screen i am however, able to edit the lines without hitting 'e'. So i remove the words quiet splash from the end of the line beginning linux. I am, however, not sure whether to get rid of the two dashes (--) which come after splash. [edit: it doesn't make a difference if i do] Hitting return after this just seems to allow me to edit the text - creating new lines. So i presume i should hit Ctrl-x or F10 to boot with the changes i have made. When i do this i get the blank screen again. No error message. Again, having more than 4GB of RAM is not going to force you to use the 64-bit version. You can use all the RAM you have by switching to the PAE kernel after upgrading the memory, if the installer doesn't put that on for you now. This is seeming like a significantly easier option at the moment. So if i don't work this out, i'll just go with this. I don't think it's necessarily the fact that video drivers are not working on the 64-bit version, it's more likely that the installer hasn't picked the right one. Maybe you could check which driver the 32-bit version uses, and force the 64-bit one to use the same... but I'm getting out of my depth about how to actually accomplish that! If this is going to be tricky then i might just go with PAE kernel. To Dave: I had the same issue with the live cd on 64 bit, the only way I could get it on was to start with a 10.04 disk and upgrade. It did go without issue and if you really need to get it on your machine asap perhaps this is the best route? Possibly this is the best option. I don't need this on my machine now, i would just like it to be... I think i might just try and post a bug and then install the 32 bit version, use PAE kernel and then, if nothing else comes up, try the upgrading route. I am however still open to ideas if people have any. j On 16 August 2011 16:24, Neil Greenwood neil.greenwood@gmail.com wrote: On 16.08.11 15:15, James Morrissey wrote: Hi Neil, Thanks for the response. Wanting to repartition my HDD (using GParted) so that i can dual boot, i 'Try Ubuntu without Installing', at which point the screen goes blank and nothing happens. I am then forced into a hard reboot. I get the exact same result when i 'Check the disk'. That sounds like a video driver issue. I think when the menu is displayed it mentions pressing different F-keys across the bottom of the screen. IIRC, one offers a failsafe video option. Use that and see if you get further. The other thing to try is to edit the boot entry and remove the 'quiet' option at the end - this will hopefully display a more-helpful error message than a blank screen! Let us know if you need help with how to do that... When i get to the GRUB screen i can't seem to see any F-keys listed at the bottom. All i have is the following; Use the (up arrow) and (down arrow) keys to select which entry is highlighted. Press enter to boot the selected OS, 'e' to edit the commands before booting or 'c' for a command line. I am not sure what to do with this, i am guessing that possibility of editing command lines is the one you were referring to in terms of the 'quiet' option. I have no idea how to do this so if you think it would be useful, some instructions would be great. I'm getting confused
[ubuntu-uk] Two questions: 64bit live USB problem and dual boot with recovery partition
Hi all, I have just received my new laptop. Its a Thinkpad x121e, with Intel (Core i3). I am trying to put ubuntu on it, but i am having some problems with the 64 bit live USB. When i run the USB i get i get a GRUB-looking screen, with options to: 1. Try Ubuntu without installing 2. Install Ubuntu 3. Check the disk Wanting to repartition my HDD (using GParted) so that i can dual boot, i 'Try Ubuntu without Installing', at which point the screen goes blank and nothing happens. I am then forced into a hard reboot. I get the exact same result when i 'Check the disk'. To check the USB, i tried it on my old laptop (32bit, Celeron M). When i did so i got a purple screen with an image of what looks like a keyboard and a man, and then a message telling me to try a kernel which matches with my machined architecture. I then tried a live USB with 32 bit ubuntu and the live USB works fine - i am sending this email from this live instance. The same can be said for a 32 bit Mint live usb. So i am not sure what is going on. If anyone could tell me why the 64bit install is not working, it would be great as i'd like to get it up and running. The only thing i could think of was that i have downloaded the amd64.iso, and this is an intel machine, but all the sites on the web suggest that this shouldn't make a difference (if it does, where might i get an 64 bit version for intel). In addition i am not sure why, if this was the problem, my old celeron laptop brings up the error message while the new machine just hangs. One more question i have is about dual booting and maintaining my recovery partition (something i have not had to do before). From GParted i see that the recovery partition is located at the end of the hard drive. I am wondering two things: 1. If i resize the windows partition will the recovery partition move next to it? 2. If not would i do well to install ubuntu between the windows and recovery partition, and how do i do this since the 'install into largest continuous space' option seems to have been replaced by the 'install alongside windows' option in the installer. Will the alongside option put the install in the right place? As always, any and all help is very much appreciated. Thanks, James. -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Two questions: 64bit live USB problem and dual boot with recovery partition
On 16.08.11 13:03, James Morrissey wrote: Hi all, I have just received my new laptop. Its a Thinkpad x121e, with Intel (Core i3). I am trying to put ubuntu on it, but i am having some problems with the 64 bit live USB. When i run the USB i get i get a GRUB-looking screen, with options to: 1. Try Ubuntu without installing 2. Install Ubuntu 3. Check the disk That means it's booted OK as far as GRUB. Wanting to repartition my HDD (using GParted) so that i can dual boot, i 'Try Ubuntu without Installing', at which point the screen goes blank and nothing happens. I am then forced into a hard reboot. I get the exact same result when i 'Check the disk'. That sounds like a video driver issue. I think when the menu is displayed it mentions pressing different F-keys across the bottom of the screen. IIRC, one offers a failsafe video option. Use that and see if you get further. The other thing to try is to edit the boot entry and remove the 'quiet' option at the end - this will hopefully display a more-helpful error message than a blank screen! Let us know if you need help with how to do that... To check the USB, i tried it on my old laptop (32bit, Celeron M). When i did so i got a purple screen with an image of what looks like a keyboard and a man, and then a message telling me to try a kernel which matches with my machined architecture. That's expected behaviour when booting a 64-bit live 'disk' on 32-bit hardware. The purple screen probably briefly appears for the 64-bit laptop too. I then tried a live USB with 32 bit ubuntu and the live USB works fine - i am sending this email from this live instance. The same can be said for a 32 bit Mint live usb. On your new hardware? If you don't have more than 4Gb of RAM on the new laptop, you won't get much (any?) benefit running the 64-bit version. Even if you have more than 4Gb of RAM, the installer will install a special PAE kernel that will use the extra RAM - each process will be limited however. Other than that, the 32-bit version will do what most people need, even on 64-bit hardware. So i am not sure what is going on. If anyone could tell me why the 64bit install is not working, it would be great as i'd like to get it up and running. The only thing i could think of was that i have downloaded the amd64.iso, and this is an intel machine, but all the sites on the web suggest that this shouldn't make a difference (if it does, where might i get an 64 bit version for intel). In addition i am not sure why, if this was the problem, my old celeron laptop brings up the error message while the new machine just hangs. amd64 is the correct image. The reason for the name is that there was an earlier, non-compatible, Intel 64-bit architecture, codenamed Itanium. This is only used for servers. amd64 will work on 64-bit AMD, Intel and other desktop processors. One more question i have is about dual booting and maintaining my recovery partition (something i have not had to do before). From GParted i see that the recovery partition is located at the end of the hard drive. I am wondering two things: 1. If i resize the windows partition will the recovery partition move next to it? Not by default, no. 2. If not would i do well to install ubuntu between the windows and recovery partition, and how do i do this since the 'install into largest continuous space' option seems to have been replaced by the 'install alongside windows' option in the installer. Will the alongside option put the install in the right place? I don't know. However, if you select the Advanced or Manual partitioning option, you can make the changes you want and then select the partition into which Ubuntu will be installed. As always, any and all help is very much appreciated. Thanks, James. Cofion/Regards, Neil. -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Two questions: 64bit live USB problem and dual boot with recovery partition
Hi Neil, Thanks for the response. Wanting to repartition my HDD (using GParted) so that i can dual boot, i 'Try Ubuntu without Installing', at which point the screen goes blank and nothing happens. I am then forced into a hard reboot. I get the exact same result when i 'Check the disk'. That sounds like a video driver issue. I think when the menu is displayed it mentions pressing different F-keys across the bottom of the screen. IIRC, one offers a failsafe video option. Use that and see if you get further. The other thing to try is to edit the boot entry and remove the 'quiet' option at the end - this will hopefully display a more-helpful error message than a blank screen! Let us know if you need help with how to do that... When i get to the GRUB screen i can't seem to see any F-keys listed at the bottom. All i have is the following; Use the (up arrow) and (down arrow) keys to select which entry is highlighted. Press enter to boot the selected OS, 'e' to edit the commands before booting or 'c' for a command line. I am not sure what to do with this, i am guessing that possibility of editing command lines is the one you were referring to in terms of the 'quiet' option. I have no idea how to do this so if you think it would be useful, some instructions would be great. I then tried a live USB with 32 bit ubuntu and the live USB works fine - i am sending this email from this live instance. The same can be said for a 32 bit Mint live usb. On your new hardware? Yes, both 32 bit live USBs work on the new hardware. It is just the 64 bit ones that don't. If you don't have more than 4Gb of RAM on the new laptop, you won't get much (any?) benefit running the 64-bit version. Even if you have more than 4Gb of RAM, the installer will install a special PAE kernel that will use the extra RAM - each process will be limited however. Other than that, the 32-bit version will do what most people need, even on 64-bit hardware. At the moment i have 4GB of RAM installed, but space for another 4GB, which i will likely buy in time. So i would like, at some stage, to get the 64 bit version working even if i have to install the 32 bit for the next while - until video driver issues get sorted. 2. If not would i do well to install ubuntu between the windows and recovery partition, and how do i do this since the 'install into largest continuous space' option seems to have been replaced by the 'install alongside windows' option in the installer. Will the alongside option put the install in the right place? I don't know. However, if you select the Advanced or Manual partitioning option, you can make the changes you want and then select the partition into which Ubuntu will be installed. Thanks for the advice, i'll hopefully get onto that when i can get a live instance running. It would be great to get this working. Do let me know if you have any other ideas about editing the commands, or sorting the video driver. Thanks, j On 16 August 2011 14:24, Neil Greenwood neil.greenwood@gmail.com wrote: On 16.08.11 13:03, James Morrissey wrote: Hi all, I have just received my new laptop. Its a Thinkpad x121e, with Intel (Core i3). I am trying to put ubuntu on it, but i am having some problems with the 64 bit live USB. When i run the USB i get i get a GRUB-looking screen, with options to: 1. Try Ubuntu without installing 2. Install Ubuntu 3. Check the disk That means it's booted OK as far as GRUB. Wanting to repartition my HDD (using GParted) so that i can dual boot, i 'Try Ubuntu without Installing', at which point the screen goes blank and nothing happens. I am then forced into a hard reboot. I get the exact same result when i 'Check the disk'. That sounds like a video driver issue. I think when the menu is displayed it mentions pressing different F-keys across the bottom of the screen. IIRC, one offers a failsafe video option. Use that and see if you get further. The other thing to try is to edit the boot entry and remove the 'quiet' option at the end - this will hopefully display a more-helpful error message than a blank screen! Let us know if you need help with how to do that... To check the USB, i tried it on my old laptop (32bit, Celeron M). When i did so i got a purple screen with an image of what looks like a keyboard and a man, and then a message telling me to try a kernel which matches with my machined architecture. That's expected behaviour when booting a 64-bit live 'disk' on 32-bit hardware. The purple screen probably briefly appears for the 64-bit laptop too. I then tried a live USB with 32 bit ubuntu and the live USB works fine - i am sending this email from this live instance. The same can be said for a 32 bit Mint live usb. On your new hardware? If you don't have more than 4Gb of RAM on the new laptop, you won't get much (any?) benefit running the 64-bit version. Even if you have more than 4Gb of RAM, the installer will install a
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Two questions: 64bit live USB problem and dual boot with recovery partition
On Tue, Aug 16, 2011 at 1:03 PM, James Morrissey morrissey.jam...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, I have just received my new laptop. Its a Thinkpad x121e, with Intel (Core i3). I am trying to put ubuntu on it, but i am having some problems with the 64 bit live USB. When i run the USB i get i get a GRUB-looking screen, with options to: 1. Try Ubuntu without installing 2. Install Ubuntu 3. Check the disk Wanting to repartition my HDD (using GParted) so that i can dual boot, i 'Try Ubuntu without Installing', at which point the screen goes blank and nothing happens. I am then forced into a hard reboot. I get the exact same result when i 'Check the disk'. To check the USB, i tried it on my old laptop (32bit, Celeron M). When i did so i got a purple screen with an image of what looks like a keyboard and a man, and then a message telling me to try a kernel which matches with my machined architecture. I then tried a live USB with 32 bit ubuntu and the live USB works fine - i am sending this email from this live instance. The same can be said for a 32 bit Mint live usb. So i am not sure what is going on. If anyone could tell me why the 64bit install is not working, it would be great as i'd like to get it up and running. The only thing i could think of was that i have downloaded the amd64.iso, and this is an intel machine, but all the sites on the web suggest that this shouldn't make a difference (if it does, where might i get an 64 bit version for intel). In addition i am not sure why, if this was the problem, my old celeron laptop brings up the error message while the new machine just hangs. One more question i have is about dual booting and maintaining my recovery partition (something i have not had to do before). From GParted i see that the recovery partition is located at the end of the hard drive. I am wondering two things: 1. If i resize the windows partition will the recovery partition move next to it? 2. If not would i do well to install ubuntu between the windows and recovery partition, and how do i do this since the 'install into largest continuous space' option seems to have been replaced by the 'install alongside windows' option in the installer. Will the alongside option put the install in the right place? As always, any and all help is very much appreciated. Thanks, James. -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/ Hello James, Perhaps not the most useful response you'll receive but... I had the same issue with the live cd on 64 bit, the only way I could get it on was to start with a 10.04 disk and upgrade. It did go without issue and if you really need to get it on your machine asap perhaps this is the best route? Best Regards, Dave Hanson -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Two questions: 64bit live USB problem and dual boot with recovery partition
On 16.08.11 15:15, James Morrissey wrote: Hi Neil, Thanks for the response. Wanting to repartition my HDD (using GParted) so that i can dual boot, i 'Try Ubuntu without Installing', at which point the screen goes blank and nothing happens. I am then forced into a hard reboot. I get the exact same result when i 'Check the disk'. That sounds like a video driver issue. I think when the menu is displayed it mentions pressing different F-keys across the bottom of the screen. IIRC, one offers a failsafe video option. Use that and see if you get further. The other thing to try is to edit the boot entry and remove the 'quiet' option at the end - this will hopefully display a more-helpful error message than a blank screen! Let us know if you need help with how to do that... When i get to the GRUB screen i can't seem to see any F-keys listed at the bottom. All i have is the following; Use the (up arrow) and (down arrow) keys to select which entry is highlighted. Press enter to boot the selected OS, 'e' to edit the commands before booting or 'c' for a command line. I am not sure what to do with this, i am guessing that possibility of editing command lines is the one you were referring to in terms of the 'quiet' option. I have no idea how to do this so if you think it would be useful, some instructions would be great. I'm getting confused with an older live disk then! Yes, this is the editing bit I referred to. Move to the 'Try Ubuntu...' option but press 'e' instead of 'Enter'. This changes to a different screen which displays several lines and similar e/c/Enter options at the bottom. Move to the line that starts 'linux' and press 'e' again. Delete the word(s) 'quiet' and/or 'splash' from the end of the line, then press Enter several times until your machine starts booting (I think it's 3 times, but I'm not sure). Hopefully, your machine will then boot successfully! If it fails, hopefully it will display an error about what caused the failure... There are also the ACPI/APCI/etc. options that might be causing the boot failure. There are 5-10 different options you can add instead of the 'quiet splash' that disable various checks that could be causing the boot to hang. But that will depend on what you see when you try my suggestion. [snip] If you don't have more than 4Gb of RAM on the new laptop, you won't get much (any?) benefit running the 64-bit version. Even if you have more than 4Gb of RAM, the installer will install a special PAE kernel that will use the extra RAM - each process will be limited however. Other than that, the 32-bit version will do what most people need, even on 64-bit hardware. At the moment i have 4GB of RAM installed, but space for another 4GB, which i will likely buy in time. So i would like, at some stage, to get the 64 bit version working even if i have to install the 32 bit for the next while - until video driver issues get sorted. Again, having more than 4GB of RAM is not going to force you to use the 64-bit version. You can use all the RAM you have by switching to the PAE kernel after upgrading the memory, if the installer doesn't put that on for you now. I don't think it's necessarily the fact that video drivers are not working on the 64-bit version, it's more likely that the installer hasn't picked the right one. Maybe you could check which driver the 32-bit version uses, and force the 64-bit one to use the same... but I'm getting out of my depth about how to actually accomplish that! [snip] Cofion/Regards, Neil. -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
Re: [ubuntu-uk] Two questions: 64bit live USB problem and dual boot with recovery partition
Neil, thanks again. [snip] Yes, this is the editing bit I referred to. Move to the 'Try Ubuntu...' option but press 'e' instead of 'Enter'. This changes to a different screen which displays several lines and similar e/c/Enter options at the bottom. Move to the line that starts 'linux' and press 'e' again. Delete the word(s) 'quiet' and/or 'splash' from the end of the line, then press Enter several times until your machine starts booting (I think it's 3 times, but I'm not sure). Hopefully, your machine will then boot successfully! If it fails, hopefully it will display an error about what caused the failure... There are also the ACPI/APCI/etc. options that might be causing the boot failure. There are 5-10 different options you can add instead of the 'quiet splash' that disable various checks that could be causing the boot to hang. But that will depend on what you see when you try my suggestion. After hitting 'e' at the original GRUB screen, i get a screen with the following at the bottom: Minimum Emacs - like screen editing is supported. TAB lists completions. Press Ctrl-x or F10 to boot, Ctrl-c or F2 for a command line or ESC to discard edits and return to the GRUB menu. This screen has nothing about editing etc. like there was on the first GRUB menu. On this screen i am however, able to edit the lines without hitting 'e'. So i remove the words quiet splash from the end of the line beginning linux. I am, however, not sure whether to get rid of the two dashes (--) which come after splash. [edit: it doesn't make a difference if i do] Hitting return after this just seems to allow me to edit the text - creating new lines. So i presume i should hit Ctrl-x or F10 to boot with the changes i have made. When i do this i get the blank screen again. No error message. Again, having more than 4GB of RAM is not going to force you to use the 64-bit version. You can use all the RAM you have by switching to the PAE kernel after upgrading the memory, if the installer doesn't put that on for you now. This is seeming like a significantly easier option at the moment. So if i don't work this out, i'll just go with this. I don't think it's necessarily the fact that video drivers are not working on the 64-bit version, it's more likely that the installer hasn't picked the right one. Maybe you could check which driver the 32-bit version uses, and force the 64-bit one to use the same... but I'm getting out of my depth about how to actually accomplish that! If this is going to be tricky then i might just go with PAE kernel. To Dave: I had the same issue with the live cd on 64 bit, the only way I could get it on was to start with a 10.04 disk and upgrade. It did go without issue and if you really need to get it on your machine asap perhaps this is the best route? Possibly this is the best option. I don't need this on my machine now, i would just like it to be... I think i might just try and post a bug and then install the 32 bit version, use PAE kernel and then, if nothing else comes up, try the upgrading route. I am however still open to ideas if people have any. j On 16 August 2011 16:24, Neil Greenwood neil.greenwood@gmail.com wrote: On 16.08.11 15:15, James Morrissey wrote: Hi Neil, Thanks for the response. Wanting to repartition my HDD (using GParted) so that i can dual boot, i 'Try Ubuntu without Installing', at which point the screen goes blank and nothing happens. I am then forced into a hard reboot. I get the exact same result when i 'Check the disk'. That sounds like a video driver issue. I think when the menu is displayed it mentions pressing different F-keys across the bottom of the screen. IIRC, one offers a failsafe video option. Use that and see if you get further. The other thing to try is to edit the boot entry and remove the 'quiet' option at the end - this will hopefully display a more-helpful error message than a blank screen! Let us know if you need help with how to do that... When i get to the GRUB screen i can't seem to see any F-keys listed at the bottom. All i have is the following; Use the (up arrow) and (down arrow) keys to select which entry is highlighted. Press enter to boot the selected OS, 'e' to edit the commands before booting or 'c' for a command line. I am not sure what to do with this, i am guessing that possibility of editing command lines is the one you were referring to in terms of the 'quiet' option. I have no idea how to do this so if you think it would be useful, some instructions would be great. I'm getting confused with an older live disk then! Yes, this is the editing bit I referred to. Move to the 'Try Ubuntu...' option but press 'e' instead of 'Enter'. This changes to a different screen which displays several lines and similar e/c/Enter options at the bottom. Move to the line that starts 'linux' and press 'e' again. Delete the word(s) 'quiet' and/or 'splash' from the end of the line, then press Enter
