Greetings everyone,
I have been a member for several years, this is my first post. Thanks in advance for any assistance that may be offered.

I recently upgraded from ubuntu 8.10 to 9.04. Using Dell Latitude D800 laptop. Initially seemed fine. After several days, began to see black and white boxes at bottom of screen during boot up. Only a short flash. My thought was that I had a video card problem brewing but did not do anything. On Friday, at boot up, saw a screen full of the black and white boxes, but had no problems. Realized that I really needed to find out what was going on. Got busy and did not do anything.

Left system on overnight Friday and Saturday evening came in to find gray screen that would not go away when space bar or left click button depressed. Rebooted and was not able to boot.

Lights come on and can hear hard drive, but nothing happens.

Tried to boot from boot disk, nothing. Tried to boot from boot image placed on flashdrive, but without the ability to change so the system will boot from usb, I presume that this option will not work. Tried it anyway, no luck.

Currently looking for an external drive case that will allow me to access hard drive from desktop. Bought one at Best Buy, Listened to the associate rather than following my mind and bought the wrong one. Have to return tomorrow.

Any ideas on what to do next?

Sorry my first post is so long.

Well, to determine if it maybe is a graphics mode related problem, you can try starting the system in text mode?

You might be able to do this by booting off your distro's rescue disc (if it has one) ?

Then, edit the file /etc/inittab, and set the

line to read like this:

and save the file.

and try to start the system normally.

If it DOES boot now, you know that you have some kind of graphics related problem. If it still does not boot, you most likely have a more serious hardware failure, and the boxes you refer to is merely a symptom of this larger, more comprehensive failure.

But it DOES sound like you had some slowly progressing hardware failure, most likely in your video subsystem somehwere. It is extremely unusual to have a new distro work for a few weeks, then PROGRESSIVELY start to fail...

in 9.04 some video drivers have been blacklisted. IT is a good idea to boot in text mode and check things out. using a live distro, you will know wether the video still works. I would also do a file system check for the live distro.

Late last night I used the Distro CD,turned the laptop on and was able to access a diagnostic tool. When the test reached the video portion, the screen went white and stayed there. I turned it off and turned it on again. Nothing happened, the power on light was lit, but that was it.

I tried again a few minutes ago and the power on light is on, but there is no activity on the screen and I do not hear or feel any vibration that often indicates something is happening between the hard drive and the cdrom/dvd drive.

I think my system is cooked.

At least I was able to load the hard drive to an external case and save my data. Guess I am looking for another laptop.
Thanks for you help.

It is a moot point now, but even with a foobared screen, you can ctrlalt-f1 or f2 and get a text screen to log in to and make changes. Sure wish I could do that on messywindoze.