Black screen after installing Kubuntu on Dell 1537

[Guest]

Hi there,

I'm new to Kubuntu and would love it to work, I'm hoping that you kind and experienced people can help me through!

I used to use SUSE Linux on an old desktop and really like K so Kubuntu seems the ideal OS for me. I am trying to load it on my Dell 1537 (Core2 Duo, ATI Radeon Mobility Graphics, 4Gb mem). It works fine running from the CD, however when I install onto the hard disk and reboot I just get a black screen, sometimes it gives a flash then goes black again but nothing you can see or type into.

I have been using Ubuntu on this machine which loaded and worked perfectly. I have tried Kubuntu 13.04 64 bit, and just now 13.10 32 bit. Exactly the same problem.

I read that it might be worth trying "MODESET=0" at the end of the Linux line in GRUB. What I need to know is, when I start the laptop, it just rips through the code then gives me a black screen. Can I stop it somewhere and get into GRUB to edit? Or maybe GRUB isn't installed by default?

I have this feeling that the OS is running but it's a graphics problem. When I press the power button, the OS starts working and shuts the laptop down. Is there a command I can type to get a command line maybe?

Any help you can give would be much appreciated.

Cheers

Pete

[oshunluvr]

There are dozens of posts here about fixing the black screen issue. You don't say if you've tried any of them or not, but you might want to search and read a bit if you haven't yet.

As far as editing grub, you should be able to hold down the shift key (I think, might be ESC) during boot and the GRUB menu should become available. Then you can edit your entry and add NOMODESET or MODESET=0 to the linux boot line and boot. This type of edit will not be saved. To save your changes, you need to edit /etc/default/grub, add your changes there, and then run update-grub to install the changes into grub.cfg.

If you can't get the grub menu to appear, you can boot to a liveUSB, mount the /boot partition (which ever partition you have /boot on), find and edit grub.cfg (usually in /boot/grub), add your entry to the boot line and save.