i see grub, but no "kubuntu loading", no login, no recovery mode, nothing

[grasshopper]

hi everyone!

i have an acer laptop that had 2 OSs: win xp and debian lenny, both worked fine, no problems at all, i just didn't like the fact that the video driver for debian was very old, and so my screen was all stretched and looked terrible.

since i prefer kde over gnome, i downloaded kubuntu last week (64 bit version, and the text based installation since i had experienced some problems with debian's graphical install)

i installed it about an hour ago, no problems at all during installation.

installation finished, so it ejects CD and reboots.

then i got to GRUB and choose to boot kubuntu, but then the screen went black. the computer seemed to be busy (as if it was loading the OS) and, when it was done, i still had a black screen. ctrl+alt+del didn't work. i tried switching to text mode with ctrl+alt+f3 but i still had a black screen, however, ctrl+alt+del worked this time.

i tried booting in recovery mode, but after selecting it from GRUB i see some information (again, as if it is loading the OS) but then i get a black screen again.

so i try booting into windows to look for help on the net, but then i get a message that the file hald.dll isn't working, and that because of it, windows can't boot

please help, i really need to get my laptop working again

thanks in advance

[grasshopper]

Re: i see grub, but no "kubuntu loading", no login, no recovery mode, nothing

no replies, huh? this must be some really weird problem then

anyway, i remembered i had used fedora years ago, also, i remembered that it was very reliable.

so i downloaded fedora 12 and guess what?

1. unlike debian and ubuntu, i could install in graphical mode, everything went just fine
2. unlike debian, it required no extra configuration at all (even the wireless adapter was properly configured by the installer)
3. the screen looks fantastic. i had full 1366x768 resolution even while installing!

so, to all the people out there having problems with debian and ubuntu: switch to fedora, because it's far better than those two combined

[Qqmike]

Re: i see grub, but no "kubuntu loading", no login, no recovery mode, nothing

Your problem is ridiculously common, some posts on it lately, in fact. A trivial search would have resolved it for you.

[tab1]

Re: i see grub, but no "kubuntu loading", no login, no recovery mode, nothing

Hi, I've had exactly the same problem that the screen goes blank after grub.

This seems to be a common problem with the 64 bit version of Kubuntu as there are other recent posts. I have done quite a lot of searching without much luck so disagree with the previous post.

I was also pointed to the top20 FAQ but I have not been able to get anywhere with it.

If there is an obvious solution, would someone please be so kind as to point us to it?

[oshunluvr]

Re: i see grub, but no "kubuntu loading", no login, no recovery mode, nothing

Acer laptops usually use intel graphics chips and there are literally hundreds (maybe thousands) of posts, blogs, and fixes about issues with this chip and Acer laptops and there are even a dozen or so pages and posts - including a current one on this forum specifically geared toward Acer laptop issues and there is even a special PPA repository just for Acer laptops that fixes video and a couple of other Acer specific issues. I know all this and I don't run linux on an Acer laptop, that's odd isn't it?

I have to agree with Qqmike.

On the other hand, I have no issue with anyone using Fedora or any other distro they choose. However, any poster in any forum who won't do his own legwork and asks for help without even giving the basic specs of their hardware and what steps they've taken to resolve the issue is unlikely to get any real help. But that's just my (and maybe Qqmike's) opinion.

Good luck.

[grasshopper]

Re: i see grub, but no "kubuntu loading", no login, no recovery mode, nothing

it's curious because my original post went 8 days without response (not even a "please post your system specs" or a "this has been solved before, check out this thread"), but as soon as i posted "fedora did the job" this thread got some attention.

i've used linux for a while now and this was the first time i had to register to a linux forum. And that was because i searched the net for a solution but couldn't find one.

I agree, problems with acer laptops and their display are very common (i had to do a lot of searching while i was in debian), but i just couldn't find a solution to this particular problem: some were very similar, but their solutions didn't work (the most common was "go into recovery mode and do this and that" but, as i said before, i couldn't even log in into recovery mode)

maybe i didn't search hard enough, but seriously, no OS should have this kind of problems in the first place (who wants an OS that leaves your computer in an unusable state after installing it? just so you go and have fun looking for a solution? and that was just the beginning... i don't want to imagine how many more problems would have emerged once i could log into kubuntu)