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Ubuntu

Ubuntu Linux – Black screen and frozen system after upgrade and/or install

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After upgrading a computer from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS to Ubuntu 18.04 LTS or Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, during boot the screen goes blank (turns black), all HD disk activity halts, and the system becomes frozen. This event can also occur on a fresh installation or when updates are installed.

This is due to a video mode issue that causes the system to halt or freeze. It’s much like the issue I described here on a Fedora Linux system.

Temporary Fix

To get the system to boot:

  1. After turning on your PC, hold the right SHIFT key to get to the GRUB bootloader if your computer uses a BIOS. If your computer uses EFI or UEFI, continuously tap the “ESC” (escape) key after turning on your PC.
  2. Once GRUB is open, press the “e” key to edit the first highlighted entry “Ubuntu”.
  3. Move your cursor down to the line that starts with “linux”, and use the right arrow key to find the section with the words “ro quiet splash”.
  4. Add “nomodeset” after these words.
    nomodeset
  5. Feel free to remove “quiet” and “splash” for more verbosity to troubleshoot the boot process.
  6. Press “CTRL + X” or “F10” to boot.
  7. The system should now boot.

Permanent Fix

To permanently resolve the issue:

  1. Once the system has booted using the temporary fix, log in.
  2. Open a terminal window (Applications -> Terminal, or press the “Start” button and type terminal).
  3. Either “su” in to root, or use “sudo” to open your favorite text editor and edit the file “/etc/default/grub” (I use nano which can be install by running “apt install nano”): 
    nano /etc/default/grub
  4. Locate the line with the variable “GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT”, and add “nomodeset” to the variables. Feel free to remove “splash” and “quiet” if you’d like text boot. Here’s an example of my line after editing (yours will look different): 
    GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nomodeset"
  5. Save the file and exit the text editor (CTRL+X to quit, the press “y” and enter to save).
  6. At the bash prompt, execute the following command to regenerate the grub.conf file on the /boot partition from your new default file: 
    update-grub
  7. Restart your system, it should now boot!

Please Note: Always make sure you have a full system backup before modifying any system files!

Stephen Wagner

Stephen Wagner is President of Digitally Accurate Inc., an IT Consulting, IT Services and IT Solutions company. Stephen Wagner is also a VMware vExpert, NVIDIA NGCA Advisor, and HPE Influencer, and also specializes in a number of technologies including Virtualization and VDI.

View Comments

  • Worked for me after upgrade to Xubuntu 19.10. The only difference is Esc key to enter grub menu.

    Thanks

  • Thanks a lot, it solves my blackscreen issue after booting !
    (HP Probook 4740s + Unbuntu 19.10)

  • Had this happen to me between package linux-image-5.3.0-28-generic (5.3.0-28.30~18.04.1) and linux-image-5.3.0-40-generic (5.3.0-40.32.~18.04.1).

    The machine is a HP laptop model 17-ca1006no with Ryzen 3 CPU.

    $ uname -a
    Linux hp-laptop-17 5.3.0-40-generic #32~18.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Mon Feb 3 14:05:59 UTC 2020 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
    $ cat /proc/cpuinfo
    processor : 0
    vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
    cpu family : 23
    model : 24
    model name : AMD Ryzen 3 3200U with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx
    ...
    $ sudo lspci -v
    ...
    04:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Picasso (rev c4) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
    Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 85b3
    ...
    Capabilities: [320] Latency Tolerance Reporting
    Kernel modules: amdgpu
    ...
    $

    With the new kernel the system halts, with black screen and not responding to anything. With the older kernel, it works as it should with full HDMI resolution.

    With the nomodeset, the new kernel boots, but only with the 1027x768 resolution.

    So my solution will be to have the old kernel and see if next will fix this, and look for bug reports at Ubuntu.com

  • During install of16.04, the system encountered an error, supposedly from the original disk write. Ubuntu tried to send error message, no go. Tried another disk, nothing. Machine is Toshiba Satelite A15 AMD Turion.
    Bios splash appears then nothing but a nonresponsive flashing cursor.
    Tried Windows rescue, nothing.

  • After dual booting Ubuntu into system, I shutdown the system after a day and on restart, the goes into black screen. So I added nomodeset after quite splash in the grub and pressed ctrl+X, but now the system falls into PCIe bus error. What do I do? I even tried by removing quite splash and added nomod set but still it goes into PCIe bus error. There were solutions on internet to add pci=nomsi or noaer but then system goes into clearing orphaned inode . So I completely reinstalled the Ubuntu but still the same thing happens again black screen, PCIe bus error, etc.. can anybody understand my problem and give me solution to this mess? I have been trying the solutions all over the internet since a week. But this doesn't seem to get resolved. Please help!

  • This happened to me after upgrading from Ubuntu 18.04 LTS to 20.04 LTS. I’m now able to at least boot into the operating system. Thanks!!!

  • I tried with adding nomodeset and removed quiet and splash. But after pressing F10, system not booting
    please help

    • Hi anjana,

      It sounds like your issue is different from the issue in the blog post. I'd recommend troubleshooting the issue to attempt to find out what's going on so that you can try to find a solution once the issue is identified.

  • Ubuntu 20.04 fresh install black screen and upgrade black screen your article helps get my computer back up.

    I have a GeForce GTX 550 TI from the video and that seemed to be the problem but how do I get my graphics back or do I wait.

    At least I'm inside everything's fine, but my graphics suck should I upgrade to the driver 4:40 or just leave it alone?

    Thanks a bunch.

  • Thanks a lot.
    I've not performed both sequences, only the temporary fix.
    That's because I've knowed that the NVIDIA grafic is the reason for the black screen after login, I've installed the propriete driver from NVIDIA after the successful login.
    After installation and rebooting the system (then without the modification "nomodeset"), after the login, the desktop has appeared as it shall.
    Since it isn't described 100 %: Before and after "nomodeset" there shall be a blank or rather space to the other words (no idea if it's really required, but initially I was unsure if or if not).

    For your information:
    My support request with Dell has gone over weeks. I've asked if there are special drivers necessary. Also I've asked for a Dell specific image for installation, but for both I've got a "NO".
    With help of a forum I found out that NVIDIA is the reason. And once again I've asked the Dell support how to solve this. After many "Try this link", "do that", they've sent me the link to your instructions. Seams that they are not able to generate such a description, or rather to solve this problem in total with Canonical or NVIDIA, for all the other users which are having this problem.
    Well done - thanks.

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Published by
Stephen Wagner
5 years ago

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