Black Screen after 16.04 distribution upgrade

[Guest]

I finally clicked the "upgrade" button in the Update Manager (after years of avoiding it because I knew something would go wrong) and when I rebooted the system after the completed install I ended up with a black screen!

I had been on 14.04 and all updates were current when I tried to upgrade to 16.04, and for the past few weeks 14.04 had been showing GRUB during the startup process and I never bothered to do anything, I just let it run through and boot my machine, everything seemed fine. But, I don't understand why GRUB all of a sudden started showing up on my screen in the last couple weeks after years of never seeing it.

When I booted up the new 16.04 upgrade and the black screen appeared, I pressed ctrl>alt>del and the GRUB list came up so I tried one of the options, and sure enough I was able to boot up and log in; the system was painfully slow so I did an update (~30 or so files) and then restarted the machine. This time, GRUB did not appear and now I have no idea how to boot that 16.04 install.

Currently I am on another install of 16.04 on the same machine, I just went into the bios and changed the boot order.
I can access all the files on the hard drive of the failed 16.04 install, I just have no information on my screen when I try to boot that install.

I don't have any experience with GRUB so I'd sure appreciate some advice,
thanks

[Teunis]

I'd be surprised if this were a Grub problem.

I do find it strange you don't see the Grub menu when you have a multi-booting ssytem (more than one installation)

The black screen is more likely caused by a video driver problem, a fresh install right on top of the presently failing partitions would be a way of solving this without losing the configurations and files in the /home directory.

[jglen490]

The best path from 14.04 to 16.04 is a clean install, not a direct upgrade. While there could be a few souls who have successfully gone the direct route, in most cases it doesn't work, and is actually not recommended.

[vinnywright]

the best path from 14.04 to 16.04 is a clean install, not a direct upgrade. While there could be a few souls who have successfully gone the direct route, in most cases it doesn't work, and is actually not recommended.

+1

vinny