When I turn on my computer, the on-light turns on and the fan starts working. But the screen is black. How can I fix this so I can get access to my OS?
More detail: The problem started when I installed Ubuntu alongside my Windows 10 OS. I would occasionally get this black screen, but would sometimes be able to get into the boot menu of my Asus laptop by holding F2 while turning on the computer. I thought the problem was the dual OS-es, so I reinstalled Ubuntu on the whole HDD, erasing windows. During installation, it seemed I could get into the boot menu reliably. After installation, I ran boot repair (pastebin here: ). I restarted the machine, and now I can no longer get past the black screen. I have to force the machine to turn off by holding the power button for a few seconds. I have restarted the machine around twenty times, with various combination of shift, esc and/or F2 held in, other screens connected via either hdmi or DVI, bootable USB plugged in, and even tried leaving it on for 45 minutes. Nothing happens. Occasionally the computer will begin restarting on it's own if I force it off by holding in the off-button.
I've seen various other threads on here with similar topics. My problem seems to be different because I never get anything other than a black screen.
Any tips for what I can try?
1 Answer
I'm not quite sure what's going on, but I do have a few steps I try whenever something like this happens:
- If I can't get into the bios screen, I'll sometimes try unplugging all hard drives, disc drives, and USB drives to see if I get a "No boot drive detected" message. If I get that, then I can usually get into the BIOS again
- I'll try booting with the same drive on another computer. I have occasionally taken apart a laptop to do this, because the extra data point can be extremely useful for troubleshooting
- If I am able to access the BIOS after unplugging the hard drive and the hard drive is still loading on another computer, I'll check if there's any incompatibility between my ubuntu setup and my motherboard, for example, is UEFI enabled? Is the motherboard in AHCI mode? You can also try booting into a live USB and updating the motherboard firmware ()
- If I am not able to access the BIOS after unplugging the hard drive, then evidently something has gone very terribly wrong with the motherboard. Since the last time the motherboard worked was when it had windows installed on it, I might try seeing if it can load the windows installation media or a live windows USB (as linked above). If you can get windows working, I again suggest that you try updating the motherboard firmware, which might fix some of your issues. If you can't even get windows to load anymore, it might be time for a new motherboard
- If the BIOS loads just fine but I can't get the ubuntu drive to work on another PC, then something went wrong with the installation. If possible, I'd try to get a live USB copy of ubuntu running and reformat the drive to try again (you probably used this for the install, but just in case - )
- If all else fails, you have a graphics card installed and your motherboard has built-in display output ports, I'd try removing the card. It might just not have liked something that ubuntu did to it
