Ubuntu starts up completely black screen.
 

I have an HP 2000 with windoze 8 and ubuntu 11.10 dual booting.
The start up routine in cumbersome, but at least I have linux working.
The problem I would like help with is this:

After I get to the grub screen with all the choices, and hit enter on linux,
I can see ubuntu with the dots under it then the screen goes black.

When I hit the "star" key above #3, on the keyboard, the screen lights up.

I would like to fix this little annoyance. Thanks for any help you might have.

Sincerely Bill.

have you tried updating your ubuntu to latest version?

No, I did not try updating. It works and I'm happy with it. Just wondering how to fix the starting up with the brightness set to "0" !!! other than that little annoyance, I'm happy with 11.10