I run Ubuntu 10.04 on an Acer Aspire. Booting is erratic, and often the screen fails.
 

Sometimes the screen displays four miniature versions of itself. Sometimes there is no display of the pre-boot message. When normal boots occur, often the screen display disappears entirely and irrevocably after about ten or twenty minutes.Sometimes everything behaves well with no troubles. Any suggestions?

Sometimes? Could you be a little more specific?
pre-boot message? Are you referring to the POST which is from the motherboard itself or are you referring to the Ubuntu logo with the flashing dots? If you're referring to the Ubuntu logo the issue will probably have something to do with Plymouth. To even begin to help you we need you to be more specific.
Do you think maybe your video card is playing up?

With the little information you have given I'd say you could have a motherboard problem developing, OR, Plymouth is causing issues at boot (you should have been around when we were testing for 10.04, there were alot of angry people because of Plymouth), OR, you have a display adaptor (video card) starting to develop problems.

Hi,
a) "sometimes" means about once in about ten to fifteen boots.
b) the pre-boot message is called PXE and it checks for a possible wired network.
c) I have no idea what Plymouth is or does.

Thanks .... Fred.

G'day
hmmmm, ok.
That sounds like a motherboard issue.
Plymouth is a "splash screen" that runs hiding all the regular OS start up code that would be on the screen otherwise.

My guess is you've got a problem with your motherboard. If your Aspire is a desktop and you're reasonably confident you could pull a side panel off and, with all power turned off and disconnected, check the connections inside and also check to see how dusty it is inside. If it's a laptop it's going to be difficult to fix if it's a motherboard issue.

If it's a desktop is your display connector part of the motherboard or is a separate card?

Anytime.

Plymouth is actually your boot manager as well as the splash screen. There are 2 parts to it. Plymouth (energy sapping eye candy) and plymouth.d (ineffective boot manager responsible for boot logs, etc).

The motherboard is definitely a suspect. Plymouth could be too.

Check Plymouth by hitting "e" on the highlighted menu entry in your menu when it comes up. This will allow you to edit the menu entry for that boot only (no permanent change). Remove "splash" from that menu entry then hit Ctrl+x to boot. See if that makes a difference.

If you do not ever see the menu you have a few seconds of black screen at the start. Hit the space bar to see the menu and hit the "e" right away as you have 5 seconds or less before the default boot starts.

@ Widget. I'm leaning towards the motherboard, if it has an integral display adapter, simply because Plymouth wouldn't be running when the PXE text is/should be on the screen. I also think the Display adapter, if it is an add on card, is possibly more of a problem than Plymouth and that could be the reason for the multiple instances of the screen display within itself.

Overall my gut feeling is it is a hardware issue not a software issue so I do not actually think Plymouth is the culprit. Stranger things have happened though so it would be good to go through the procedure you've outlined and see what it tells us.

ROTFLMAO ...
Well worth a plus on your reputation ...

His post and signature indicate to me that I know him already. I think its RanchHand from another place merely based on his disdain for Plymouth.

Well I must say that hardware seems to be the likeliest problem but it is good to check these things.

Also that you seem to have caught up with me.

It's nice to have a friendly face around.

Cheers.

This is a nice forum. Actually found the UFs from here.

My son recommended this one when he recommended Ubuntu 8.04 to me.

Glad to see you here. There are some things that this forum is just a whole lot better at because of the vast number of OS' being used by some very savvy folks here. Does not have the numbers on line at one time but the info is great.

The Debian forum here is great (where I heard about the liquorix folks).

What model of Aspire, I have the 3620 and with debian squeeze it kind of lacks speed.
1.6Ghz Celeron cpu
2gG ram.