I have a PC with 2 hard disks:
- 120 GB SSD (with Windows 7)
- 2 TB (for all my data)
I partitioned the SSD in two, so I could install my Linux distributions.
No problem until here. I write my ISO on CD/DVD, go on with the live CD, install all the things and, when I reboot, I see GRUB where I can choose either Windows or the Linux distribution.
The problem comes here: when I try to start ANY of the distributions (Fedora, OpenSUSE, etc.) I get a black or white screen. With Fedora I was getting a flashing thing on my monitor.
I guess the problem comes with my graphics card (an ATI 6800 Series). But why is it that I can use a live CD without problems?
And how can I solve this thing?
P.S. At some point I managed to install Ubuntu/Kubuntu on my PC, so I am sure 100% that is possible to make it work, the problem is: I don't want to use these distributions.
Best Answer
Assuming it's just XServer Failing
Try this first, after a minute of that - hit Ctrl+Alt+F2.
That might drop you to a TTY screen where you can login text-based and do the updates/installs there.
Assuming it is the Graphics
(which would surprise me, normally if that's the case it dumps you into TTY)
Boot into a liveCD (whatever you installed from might be the best). Make a place to mount the partition of your linux device and then you can chroot in and install the graphics you need to test if that is the issue. Chroot should be installed by default on most liveCDs.
1) Boot into the liveCD (should put you in as root).
2) Make a mount point you know of for your local disk
3) Find the partition of your linux drive (outputs all drives and their partition info)
4) Mount the linux installed partition to the mount point you created
5) Chroot in and then do the updates and such.
I don't know which linux you're on, so I can't tell you what to update. I know arch is pacman -Syy && pacman -Syu, debian based is apt-get update && apt-get upgrade.
Make sure your graphics card is recognized and then find which drivers you'll need.
Maybe it's actually GRUB not seeing the right partition
If you know the partition, during boot at grub, hit "e" for edit and check that it's looking at the right partition.
I don't recall 100% (I use syslinux), but I think it looks like (hd0,#). If you try that and it fails, nothing is saved so rebooting will revert to default.
If that is the issue, however, when you get into linux just edit /boot/grub/grub.conf with the correct #.