Black screen after installation of Linux - I can't see anything!
 

I've just installed Zorin OS onto the hard drive of my Dell Inspiron 8000 laptop. I used the entire drive, overwriting Ubuntu9.10. Now my screen is black.

I think the system loaded correctly - I can hear some welcome music and the active l.e.d. of my drive slows and stops flickering. But I can't see anything!

Here's what I tried:

- using the keyboard controls to increase the brightness (no effect).
- connecting a flatscreen monitor from my desktop and attempting to use the FN+f6 keys to change the display from the laptop screen to the other (no effect)
- rebooting
- rebooting into Setup (my laptop screen lights up for perhaps 5 seconds and then goes black again)
- rebooting with Ubuntu 9.04 CD in the drive (no response)
- attempting to reboot with my original Windows ME re-installation disc in the drive (no effect)


AAARGH!!


What can I do??
My Video card is nVidia GE Force 2

Thanks in advance for any help or pointers.

I had this happen on another system. The problem was that the video
card was going into a mode that the display did not support. My advice?
Boot the system to runlevel 1 and reconfigure the video to very basic
settings. Maybe 640x480 at 8 bits. Once you get the video working,
you can always try to increase the resolution, and roll back to a saved
file if it the newer settings don't work.

try pressing CTRL+ALT+F2 and see if you get a command line login. If you do you should be able to login. Once your logged is look in /etc/X11/ and see if you have an xorg.conf. If you do then I would suggest editing it to have you video card use vesa driver. If you don't have an xorg.conf file try configuring X.

I think this is the command to do it.
or it might be

Thanks, guys, for those suggestions.

CTRL+ALT+F2 may well produce a response from the system, but nothing to see on the screen!

I don't know how to boot the system to runlevel 1.

When I power on, I get a brief flash of the setup screen (containing the option to Press F2 to enter setup). This disappears into blackness after 3 seconds, and the system pauses waiting for my admin password. If I input this normal bootup sounds like it continues but with black screen. If I do press the F2 after powering on, I can see the setup screens. The display lasts about 5 seconds, barely enough to change page or tab through some fields, before that goes black too.