Hold down the space bar + Press alot of buttons
 

Hey All,

I'm having a strange issue. It's not crippling, but I am pretty confident that it's not normal.

When I turn my laptop and I select to boot Ubuntu, the screen goes to black as it normally does, but it stays that way unless I hit a key. If I hit a key, the Ubuntu logo comes up with the progress bar under it.

Now, sometimes I have to hold down the space bar to make the little bar bounce from side to side as it is loading, before the progress bar begins to fill.

After this point, I usually need to hit/hold down a bunch of buttons to help the progress bar fill up.

After that, the screen goes to black and I press enter a few times ( this partmight be force of habit rather than necessary).

By now the Ubuntu Login screen comes up.

Does anyone have any idea what this is?

My installation came from the LiveCD, btw.

It sounds to me like a hardware issue. Maybe the graphics subsystem is having some problem which forces the screen into standby mode, or somehow shuts it down until you force a refresh, or "wake" up the machine. Or maybe it's an issue with the power source. Is there a chance that you could try a different OS on that machine?

Yeah I dual boot Windows Vista on this machine. I'm on Windows right now. Windows never has an issue booting.

EDIT: Also, I installed Ubuntu on my work computer as well, which is dual booting alongside Windows XP. I run into the same problem on that machine as well.

i92guboj's (that's hard to type!) suggestion sounds pretty reasonable; except the fact that it happens on two (presumably different) machines makes it less likely it's a machine issue, unless the machines are very similar.

Any chance you've checked on the Ubuntu forums, and/or Ubuntu bugzilla or mailing list (if there are such things)?

Perhaps try one or some of the kernel-boot-line options available when you boot it up; maybe try a/some different framebuffer modes, or maybe acpi=off or acpi=force or something(s) like that? And see if ceases (or gets worse, lol)

Most interesting, what workarounds we find sometimes. I liked your thread title! That's what got me in here :)

Sasha

Yep, knowing that it happens on separate machines reduces that chance significantly, unless the hardware is identical. I'd try shutting off power saving stuff in the BIOS and at SO level if possible. Dissabling acpi as indicated above might also help, who knows. I'd also vote for looking into the ubuntu forums (and in the ubuntu subsection of this very forum).

Thanks guys. I've got the same post up at Ubuntu Forums, but they rarely ever answer me over there.

Either way, it's not a crippling issue, it just kind of hurts the feel of Ubuntu to me.

Sounds more like a bad burn or a bad download to me and something got left out of the install.
I'd redownload from a different mirror if possible and check the md5sum and burn with the slowest possible speed.
Try it live and then maybe just try reinstalling on the home machine.