Ubuntu – Linux 4.18.0-14 won’t boot

The Ubuntu Startup Disk Creator in the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS family (including Lubuntu) is buggy. The new version introduced in version 16.04 LTS is a cloning tool and much more reliable.

You can use another cloning tool in order to make USB boot drives in Lubuntu 14.04 LTS, for example Disks alias gnome-disks, which is part of the release, and mkusb, which you can install from a ppa according to the following link.

help.ubuntu.com/community/mkusb

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mkusb/ppa  # and press Enter
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mkusb mkusb-nox usb-pack-efi

Cloning is a very reliable method to create an Ubuntu USB boot drive, and will eliminate several problems. But there are other things, that can cause problems, for example

• Bad download: Please check that the md5sum of the iso file matches the listed value at

  help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuHashes

• ACPI, APIC ... : There may still be problems that can be worked around with boot options.

• graphics: You may have problems with the graphics chip/card, that can be fixed temporarily with the boot option nomodeset and later on fixed in the installed system with a proprietary driver.

  Edit: Now that I know that you have an nvidia card, I think that you need the boot option nomodeset to run with simple graphics, and after installation you should install a proprietary graphics driver. There are several questions with good answers about that at AskUbuntu, for example How do I install the Nvidia drivers?

• wifi: You may have problems with the wifi chip/card, that can be fixed in the installed system with a proprietary driver.

You help us help you, if you specify your computer, at least

• Brand name and model
• CPU
• RAM (size)
• internal drive (size)
• graphics chip/card (brand name and model)
• wifi chip/card (brand name and model)

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