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I have a new Lenovo ThinkPad E540. I have successfully installed Ubuntu 12.04 after the installation I receive the 'remove all ... and press any key to restart'. No I receive the selection menu (note that I erased the entire disk and now only Ubuntu is installed!!), but after I clicked on Ubuntu I got black screen with a blinking white underline character in the left top corner.

I read about disabling the UEFI mode in the BIOS, which I did, but I still got the same result.

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I reinstalled everything again. After choosing Ubuntu in the GRUB menu the display stays black but I get to the login screen -> noticed by the sound of the drums!! The graphic card is a NVIDIA GeForce GT 740M.

Error before the login screen: enter image description here

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  • after changing uefi to legacy,turning off secure boot ran boot-repair. Dec 31, 2013 at 14:11
  • where do I have to run the 'boot-repair'?
    – wasp256
    Dec 31, 2013 at 14:15
  • try the second option in this help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair Dec 31, 2013 at 14:17
  • Ok I've run the boot-repair (Recommended repair) and it ended successfully, but I still get the black screen with the white stripe after choosing Ubuntu from the GRUB menu...
    – wasp256
    Dec 31, 2013 at 14:29
  • post the boot-repair log in pastebin.com and then provide the link here. Dec 31, 2013 at 14:30

2 Answers 2

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If you hear the login sound, but can't see anything, then it is likely that your backlight didn't turn on (or turned off). Try booting with the following kernel parameters:

thinkpad-acpi.brightness_enable=1 acpi_backlight=vendor

To add those parameters: While GRUB is shown press e on the Ubuntu menu entry in grub2, this will take you to edit mode and add the following option to the kernel line (add it to the end of the line which starts with "linux")

thinkpad-acpi.brightness_enable=1 acpi_backlight=vendor

Then press CTRL+x to boot with the edited kernel command line.

After you succeed with the boot just edit your /etc/default/grub file and add the working kernel line parameter to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT= line. After you edited the file run

sudo update-grub

to save the kernel line for later boots.


After looking at the logs I would advise you to try these:

  • Go into your BIOS and change you graphics to only use the integrated intel VGA card. Looking at the Lenovo user guide you can do this at the Config->Display->Graphics Device option, change that to Integrated Graphics. (You may also need to change Config->Display->OS Detection for switchable graphics to Disabled) In the live session the intel card was used, and you had no problems, but the installed ubuntu is trying to use the proprietary nvidia driver.
  • You may try booting with the nomodeset kernel parameter which usually solves problems with the nvidia driver. (But I don't know how nomodeset behaves with switchable graphics)
  • For me your logs doesn't show anything failing (but the constant (II) modesetting(G0): Modeline "1920x1080"x0.0 151.60 1920 2010 2070 2220 1080 1086 1095 1138 -hsync -vsync (68.3 kHz eP) might mean that there is a problem, I don't know this.), so I still think that this might be only a problem with the backlight not turning on. So you may try increasing the backlight with the backlight combos on your keyboard.

After you manage to solve this booting problem, then you can try searching for a solution on how to enable bumblebee or prismus to utilize both of your cards without failures.

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  • I added the parameters but it didn't work
    – wasp256
    Jan 2, 2014 at 19:58
  • The first solution worked just fine -> change to integrated graphics!!, thanks a lot enjoying Ubuntu now :)
    – wasp256
    Jan 6, 2014 at 11:46
  • @wasp256 I'm glad it helped. Don't forget that now your laptop only uses the intel VGA which means much better battery life but possibly worse performance. If you aren't satisfied with the performance of the intel card you will have to look up how to setup bumblebee on Ubuntu. If you don't need that extra performance from the nvidia card (as it is likely only needed for some graphic intensive games) then it is best to stick with your current setup.
    – falconer
    Jan 6, 2014 at 11:54
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Did you install it alongside with Windows?

My recommendation:

  1. Please install it again. (with or without Windows. It's your decision)
  2. Install only using bootable CD/DVD (no flash drive)

Try & report. Thanks!

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  • No Ubuntu is the only OS I've installed. I've tried to install it again (with USB) but nothing changed. Why can't I use a USB to install it, the installed did finish correctly, the booting after is the problem!?
    – wasp256
    Jan 1, 2014 at 15:34

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