Ubuntu – Ubuntu 14.04 loads to purple screen on Lenovo G505s. nomodeset wont work

14.04dual-bootlenovo

I have a lenovo g505s graphics card is Amd radeon hd 8550g with windows 8.1 pre installed (not my favorite os). I disabled secure boot, changed uefi to legacy mode. Then I loaded and successfully installed ubuntu alongside windows.

When the computer restarted it brought me to the grub menu, when I select ubuntu I get a frozen purple screen… if I try secure mode I get the same purple screen with "loading linux 3.13.0-24-generic than loading initial ramdisc…" and it freezes.

I have tried pressing e and changing quiet splash with nomodeset, and I still get a purple screen of death. I know that its probably a graphics card issue but have no idea how to fix it…

Please help

Best Answer

I happen to own the same model and ran into the same problem. I have tried everything starting from editing grub, installing different kernels, trying proprietary drivers, converting to efi partition, booting with battery ejected.

After 6 months of trying, I find it weird to say that what solved problem was moving network boot to top of boot order (with BIOS in legacy mode).

Yes it sounds crazy but it works now. Flawlessly. Every time.

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Ubuntu – Ubuntu hangs at purple screen

Well AMD Radeon graphics cards (especially the recent ones) are difficult to use with Linux. It happens exactly the same with my AMD Radeon HD6850, until I install the FGLRX proprietary driver package.

To install it, you must go into the Recovery Mode. To do that, hold SHIFT at startup so the GRUB menu is displayed, choose Ubuntu Recovery Mode after that. Choose to mount the disk as read/write, then drop to the root shell with networking (this is very important).

Then do the following commands once you're dropped to the root shell:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade   
sudo apt-get install fglrx    
sudo aticonfig --initial
sudo reboot

If everything worked, you should be fine and see the desktop after this.

Ubuntu – Ubuntu blank purple screen on startup

In my case I have a problem with grub rootdelay. After 20-30 sec try to hit Enter write exit (you didn't see it on screen) and hit Enter. System should run OK. Then you need to modify grub config.

But if it can't work try something else from this thread.

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