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I've been having an issue booting up for a while. When I turn on my computer, I get this

screen

and I cant really do anything beyond that. I've tried reinstalling Ubuntu and and that worked but after doing a restart, I get back to this screen and I can't boot up. I'm fairly certain that this is caused by a driver update I did.

I tried to install a driver update from a github repo that was recommended in a lot of askUbuntu posts. The driver in question is rtl8192ce, a Reatek wifi driver. I think that this is the cause because the output on that screenshot mentions that driver name a bunch of times.

Any ideas what I could to to fix this? I've already tried the reinstalling Ubuntu, recovering from an old version via the grub menu and nothing seemed to work.

Thanks for your help!

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What version of Ubuntu are you installing? Is this a brand new computer?

When installing Ubuntu on the newest computer hardware, unless you install the latest Linux kernerl available for Ubuntu, it is possible that the existing kernel is not fully optimized for your new hardware, and will not always work well with the new hardware. The kernel installed with Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (version 3.2), although supported and updated, is not as recent or updated as the kerner installed natively with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (version 3.5).

Fortunately you can easily upgrade just to the new kernel and see how it works. If the problem is sovled, all is fine. If not, or if you would like to go back to use the previous kernel, you can always restart, bring the GRUB menu (hold the shift key down during system boot) and select the previous kernel.

The simple and easy way to install the latest kernel (the one from Ubuntu 14.04) even on Ubuntu 12.04 is by:

sudo apt-get install linux-generic-lts-quantal

Then, restart and see how it works. Hope that helps!

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  • Thanks for the idea! I have a feeling this just might work. Would this overwrite any changes of drivers? And how can I access terminal if I can't boot up properly? Can I access it from the grub menu? I can't seem to do this update via the root shell
    – NissimL
    Mar 31, 2014 at 2:33
  • I managed to get to a shell where I could run apt-get (not sure how I did that...) and after trying to update, it said that I'm already on that linux kernel. Any other ideas?
    – NissimL
    Mar 31, 2014 at 2:45
  • To answer your questions one by one: (1) No drivers will be overwritten right away, but in a regular system update, it is possible that new drivers will be installed. So hold on on doing any updates until you are sure it is working fine. (2) In case you are not able to boot and get the regular terminal, you can always bring up the GRUB menu (hold the Shift key during system boot), select the 'recovery' option, and then you should have an option to boot as root console. There you can install what you need, you will already be rood. What version of Ubuntu are you using?
    – OM55
    Mar 31, 2014 at 4:04
  • Thanks. I'm using ubuntu 12.04 LTS. My issue with updating is that I can't get a network connection really because the network driver/module is the issue. I can boot with a Live CD and I'll have connection but once I enable networking from GRUB recovery mode, it crashes just as before. If I boot from a usb, would that be of any help? Like I said before, trying to update the kernel with that apt-get command didn't work because I apparently already have that version.
    – NissimL
    Mar 31, 2014 at 4:13
  • I figured out how to sort of fix the issue. I just blacklisted the module that was causing me issues and I was able to properly boot up! Now I don't have any wireless network connection but my laptop is usable, so there's that.
    – NissimL
    Mar 31, 2014 at 4:37

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