I am a Linux newbie and did one successfull install Ubuntu 9.1 32 bit on my old desktop. Encouraged by that success (and the ease of it), this week I built my own system, which will be my primary system.

I am trying to install Ubuntu 9.1 (AMD 64 version) and after the partition selection screen (I chose to partition the entire disk), I immediately get a white blank screen. Then nothing happenes.

I also tried with Ubuntu 9.1 32 bit, XUbuntu 9.1 64, Ubuntu 9.04 all had the same results.

Not sure if the hardware specs are required, but here they are:
1) Motherboard: MSI KA 780 G
2) Processor: AMD Athlon II X4 630
3) Memory: Corsair 2 x 2 GB, 800 MHz twinx 6400 c6
4) Harddrive: Hitachi sata 300, 1 TB

In desperation, I have started windows XP installation and that seems to progress fine at its leisurely pace. Its formatting the drive right now.

During one of the attempts, it did install something*, since after that I see a new ubuntu partition after that. But when I boot from hard disk I get a black screen with cursor.

I tried to search thru the forums and nobody seemed to have this exact problem, one guy got a white screen with cursor after a graphics card install, which is not the same.

If somehow I have missed a discussion on this which is already posted, I apologise. In that case pls kindly point me to that discussion.

Pls help, I dont want to go back to windows.

Regards
R

The title of your post reflects that reality

Try openSUSE, it is a lot better in this regards.

You could try adding to your "boot options" when in the "start install process" screen.

Bad... XP isn't capable of recognizing Linux partitions, most times it fails completely to format them. That will cause more panic.

There is obviusly a problem in your CDs and it is not quite evident.

No, that's due to the fact that he had a misconfigured graphic server (Xorg) or the GNU/Linux distribution he was using had some libraries outdated.

We will help! Don't be afraid
Remember, openSUSE could be a better choice for you right now. Ubuntu is not the only one GNU/Linux based distro nor the better option always.

It is up to you.

Great. Thanks for the quick reply.

I initially thought that my cd might be corrupted so I went back and used the 32 bit cd that I had used last week, which had worked.

Ubuntu was a small download less than a gig, open suse is 4.7 gigs, thats why I chose that distro. Anyways, am downloading open suse right now.

Will keep you posted.

[Windows did seem to have successfully formatted the drive, only that later on it started saying could not find cdaudio.sys, on and on for many such files. So what you were saying makes sense, windows must not have been able to format]

I also suspected that I got a bad harddrive, but the disk check utility green lighted it, saying it had no problems.

Regards
Rajesh

How old are your hard drives?
To me it looks like you have a failing hard drive.

Brand new, about two days old from newegg. Maybe I got a bad one.

All right, keep me posted then.

There are small openSUSE downloads too. I hope you got it from their home page.
I don't like openSUSE for political reasons (Novell) but it is a quality product which worth DVD downloading compared to Ubuntu.
PS:// Your hard drive is OK if Ubuntu 32 and your BIOS HDD check said so.

Ok I was able to install SUSE over the network (since the only dvd drive I have is on my laptop).

I made two changes this time around - reset bios to default and used the VGA cable instead of DVI.

Things have certainly improved, but problems remain.

I am now able to boot from disk, login and surf the web.

But I still randomly get whitescreens

*I tried to update the firefox with a flash plugin - white screen, I rebooted and tried again and this time I was successful
*I tried to open up the file manager - white screen, I rebooted and tried to open again, I was successful
...so on and so forth

It takes longer to get to the white screens with VGA cable as against the DVI.

Any action is potential whitescreen. But its inconsistent, fairly random.

I suspect that this might all along have something to do with the video driver.

So as a next step I tried to install ubuntu 9.1 again (side by side, leaving suse alone). It seemed to progress fine thru all of the steps, it even partiotined and started installing, closer to the end it errored out saying that it encountered a corrupt file, either the cd is corrupted or the disk, might be old and is corrupted.

After that, I started the install again, but this time from a flash drive instead of the CD, but this time around, after I choose the install option, I get the monochrome ubuntu screen that its loading stuff and checking battery state, after that my monitor loses signal.

Wierd.

I also ran memtest86 (two passes), memory is fine.

Would this be because the motherboard is brand new and Linux doesnt have the appropriate video drivers for it? To eliminate that I am planning to use the ATI graphics card from my old desktop and try to see if that stops the whitescreens on the suse.

Any other suggestions are welcome.

I hope it is openSUSE ...

If you are using Kwin/Compiz effects that is the reason for your White screens and a different problem. If so you should upgrade your system (for openSUSE check out repository pages here:
http://software.opensuse.org/112/en
and here:
http://en.opensuse.org/Additional_Ya...e_Repositories

1 members found this post helpful.

Yes I used OPENSUSE 11.2 from http://www.opensuse.org/en/

I can upgrade and check.

Thanks.

Instead of upgrading the repositories, I simply went down to Fry's and got a new video card. THAT WORKED!!!!

The whitescreens in suse are gone. I was also able to install ubuntu and fedora. no problem.

Thanks man for your help.

Regards
R

I made the switch from windows last night.

I had the same black screen after a clean install of Ubuntu 8.10 64 from a CD on a home built system. I waited for about an hour, and everything sorted itself out and the OS ran fine until I decided to access the Nvidia driver package.... My current condition is that after the OS boots I get a white screen with a functional mouse icon. I am unable to access the desktop GUI.

I will work through this and let you know. My fist goal is to access a terminal. After that I am pretty much out of my depth.

If you have advice great- if not I'll figure it out eventually and let you know what worked for me.

My current Linux technical level is: Extreme Newbie Level 1

My current system:
Motherboard - GIGABYTE GA-M59SLI-S5
Processor - AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ (Windsor)
GPU - EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS Video Card - 320MB GDDR3 (Nvidia)
RAM - G.SKILL 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800

Not to be offending but:
!1GB RAM AND YOU USED 64 BIT ?!?! !!
BAD BAD BAD.
64 bit actually uses more ram so it is only good if you have more then 3 GB or ram.
64 bit on less the 3 gb of ram will give less avilable RAM.
Try Ubuntu 9.04 32 bit.
Just do a clean reinstall as 8.10 is quite old.