Ubuntu Problem

Having got bored of SuSe I tried to install ubuntu. I downloaded the latest version from ubuntu.com's listed Uk mirror [64 bit version] and tried to install. The install seemed to be going ok, the black background with the orange ubuntu and progress bar with the list of stuff that gets OKed went fine but when this finished I got a blinking cursor at the top left of the screen for a few seconds then a dialogue came up [grey box black writing blue background] saying something to do with the graphics something or other failing to start Do I want to diagnose the problem. Almost instantly <1second some command propt stuff that stretches off the screen on both sides comes down and any keystrokes go into it so I can not Yes the dialogue box.

[sorry I am unsure of the exact content of the box as that part of the screen is heavily obscured by the command line text]

I tried in failsafe graphics mode and this time it got to the blinking cursor before the screen turned onto standby. I waited about 15 minute but noting seemed to be happenening.


I have checked the disc and all the sums add up, If anyone has any suggestions would be grateful.

Look for the boot options/parameters thing on the first screen you come to when your computer boots from the cd.

At the end of the line of text, try adding:

xmodule=ati

will give it a try

didn't work, same problem

have you tried asking on the ubuntu forums, or asking on irc.freenode.net #ubuntu ?

Sounds as if either the X windows program isn't starting for some reason (perhaps because of the graphics card or it hasn't detected the monitor parameters correctly.

I'm not familiar with the particular charachteristics of Ubantu, but you should be able to run it at command level. It 'might' default to the command line log in after X windows fails to start, or you may be able to set it at the boot screen (if any). If it uses GRUB as the boot loader, you may have the option of setting the run level there.

Once you have logged in at command level, you can manually edit the X window config file and set the video parameters to a minimum standard (VGA) and try re-booting with that.

Sorry I can't give specific directions, but as I say, its not a distro I'm familiar with.