My Ubuntu Turns Black at Startup
In the past, waiting a minute or two for your Ubuntu Linux system to boot and get ready for use was par for the course. Today, however, if you don't see a login screen, a terminal prompt or even scrolling text within few seconds, it may indicate that something is wrong with your system. A blank, gray or black screen on startup is especially troubling, as there can be many plausible causes for the failure.
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Video Card Issues
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Modern computer graphics cards are often more powerful than the central processing units, or CPUs, they assist. All this power is useless, however, if the operating system lacks the right video card driver. Some graphics cards don't provide drivers for Ubuntu at all. Others may have out of date or buggy drivers. Driver problems can cause a black screen during startup, before or after the login prompt. You can often fix this problem by getting the latest driver from the graphics card manufacturer, using an open-source driver or switching to the default VESA driver. Install new drivers in Ubuntu's character-based, root terminal "Recovery Mode."
Corrupted Desktop Files
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Even if you have the correct graphics card and the right driver, you may experience a black screen before or after you log in due to a corrupted or incorrectly configured Gnome desktop setup or display manager. A bad Gnome configuration can be caused by an update regression, mistakes made during settings changes, or a buggy or misbehaving Compiz. You can sometimes fix this by rebooting into the Ubuntu "Recovery Mode," then reconfiguring gdm -- the Gnome display manager – and the boot splash utility Plymouth or LightDM.
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Grub Booting Problems
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If you are dual-booting Ubuntu with another operating system like Windows, or if you use multiple hard drives, an error in the grub boot loader configuration may stop the startup process cold. Fix this by accessing your hardware BIOS and changing the boot drive order. A black screen may also be caused by grub loading a version of the Linux kernel that doesn't support your graphics card or is corrupted. If your opening grub screen lists more than one kernel version, select an earlier version, boot your system, then look for help online. Another solution is to start over with clean reinstall of Ubuntu.
Intel Graphic Chipsets
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Some older versions of Ubuntu had severe issues using UXA graphics acceleration with integrated video hardware from Intel. The GM965 and GL960 Integrated Graphics Controllers would sometimes cause black screens during startup, when waking from hibernation or after you simply moved windows around on the screen. One solution is to do a clean install with the latest version of Ubuntu, then run the Unity launch in the 2D mode.
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