Ubuntu – Booting to Linux leads to empty screen and blinking underscore

bootdual-bootgrub2

I'm dual booting Linux with Windows 10, and after the "Creator's Update" for Win10 my Linux installation stopped booting correctly. It opened to the Grub prompt, and from there I could direct it to the right directory and boot manually.

While trying to fix the problem, I made it worse. I ran some commands to attempt to update Grub and reinstall it.

Now I can't boot to Linux or access the grub prompt; when I boot to Linux, it leads me to an empty black screen with nothing but a flashing underscore. I can't input anything, except Ctrl Alt Del to restart. If I hold down shift while it's booting up, instead of just a flashing underscore, it says GRUB and a flashing underscore. It still doesn't let me input any commands.

Does anyone have any idea what the problem might be, and how I can fix it?

Best Answer

you can fix it by booting with a live CD. Then mount the partition that contains your ubuntu installation somewhere, then chroot into it and edit /boot/grub/grub.cfg to correct the menu entry.

So, once you've booted the live CD version (you can boot from an USB drive also) do the following:

  • ls /dev - see all sdx drives you got there
  • mount /dev/sdx /mnt/ - where sdx is the partition containing your ubuntu root filesystem
  • mount --bind /proc /mnt
  • mount --bind /dev /mnt
  • mount --bind /sys /mnt
  • chroot /mnt
  • apt-get install --reinstall grub
  • vi /boot/grub/grub.cfg - edit the menuentry section to fix your boot

hope this helps

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