Ubuntu – Black screen on boot, but boot works

19.04bootdisplay

Sometimes, when booting, I get:

  1. grub
  2. ubuntu purple background
  3. Grey backlit screen
  4. Black screen

And nothing else. It does seem that Ubuntu is correctly booted. To fix the issue, I can put the computer to sleep and back again, and then the screen will be OK. I am certain that ubuntu is booted because, during the black screen, I typed enter, then my password, then I poped a terminal. After that, I did the "fix" routine and confirmed that I had an open terminal in my session.

I am unsure where to look at as most questions related to this cannot boot at all.
I did a video recording of the failed boot, I suspect this is clearer than my explanation.

Here are the 4 lines that flashes, from dmesg:

 [   20.065643] ACPI Error: Needed type [Reference], found [Integer] 00000000214ff4c5 (20181213/exresop-69)

 [   20.065656] ACPI Error: AE_AML_OPERAND_TYPE, While resolving operands for [Store] (20181213/dswexec-427)

 [   20.065700] No Arguments are initialized for method [RPPC]

 [   20.065704] ACPI Error: Method parse/execution failed  \_SB.PCI0.LPCB.EC0.RPPC, AE_AML_OPERAND_TYPE (20181213/psparse-531)

 [   20.065716] ACPI Error: Method parse/execution failed  \_SB.PCI0.LPCB.EC0._Q04, AE_AML_OPERAND_TYPE (20181213/psparse-531)

Looking these up didn't yield anything helpful for me but I might have missed crucial information as I've got no idea what's happening. I've seen driver related answers, telling to install them from Ubuntu's "additional drivers" tool if they appear; there's nothing here for me.

Questions are therefore:

  • What other information can I provide to diagnostic what happens?
  • How to fix this?

Edit 1: I tried both kernel options at boot: 5.0 and 4.18, didnt' help

Best Answer

Seems like a graphics driver issue to me. Have you tried to add nomodeset to your grub?

nomodeset: tells your system to not load the display drivers until the system is completely booted.

During grub screen press the e key to edit the grub.

  1. Find this line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
  2. Change it to: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nomodeset"
  3. then, Ctrl+ X

You should boot normally. These changes last only for one boot.

If this works and you want to make the changes permanent:

  1. I am using Vim here but you can use nano or whatever text editor you please:

    sudo vim /etc/default/grub

  2. Make the same changes as above: Save and exit.

  3. Then

    sudo update-grub
reboot

Now coming to the core issue here:

You need to figure out what driver is causing these issue and re-install it.

Simpler way of doing that would be to go "Softwares & Updates" > "Additional Drivers" and install any missing drivers.

If your driver is corrupt the process will be a bit more hands on.

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