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I was uploading an update a few weeks ago and and it required a reboot. When it rebooted the system crashed. and all I got was a blank screen. After playing with it several times I was able to figure out F12 got me to the boot screen and then it would go into Ubuntu and give me the following options:

Ubuntu, Advanced Options,
Memory test x386, Memory test (I don't remember what was in parentheses)

I chose Advanced options and was able to go into 3.13.43 Recovery Mode. That seemed to make everything work ok, except I have no sound. I have all the volume controls right and I even went into alsamixer and found it to look different than the post I found on it. I only have a box with oo in it and below it. I don't have the master controls. My system is a Gigabyte F2A55-HD2 with a AMD A8 6600K processor, 8 GB RAM, and a HDMI 32" HDTV as a monitor. Every time I reboot, I have to repeat the process above. I would just like to wipe the drive and start over, but not sure how. I keep all my files on a personal Seagate cloud on my network so I am not worried about losing anything. Any help is greatly appreciated.

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  • do you have the option for any of the older kernels (older than 3.13.43)? There is a good chance the problem is from updating to a new kernel. If the old kernel works fine, that's the culprit. If you are using proprietary graphics drivers, like nvidia, you may have to reinstall the drivers again for the new kernel.
    – mchid
    Dec 26, 2014 at 9:14
  • mchid, thanks for the info. I do have other kernels going back to 3.13-35, which I am in right now. It doesn't seem to take permanently and I still have no audio. I would just like to wipe the drive and start over with a fresh 14.04 LTS version which I have. I understand removing Ubuntu is very tedious and not necessarily for a beginner like me. Is there another way? Thanks again! Dec 27, 2014 at 22:20
  • Yeah, just install the fresh 14.04LTS over your current installation. When the installation gets to the part asking you if you want to install Ubuntu "along side", scroll further down the screen and locate the option "something else". Click on the partition containing Ubuntu, choose the same filesystem you currently have (probably ext4) and your mountpoint should be "/". The important thing here is to not I repeat DO NOT choose to format the partition. In fact, make sure the option to format the partition is NOT selected before moving forward by clicking to accept the changes.
    – mchid
    Dec 27, 2014 at 23:22
  • By not formatting the drive, you will retain your "/home" directory and the installation will only replace all the system files. This way (always make a backup just in case!!!) you get to keep all your files and folders in music documents desktop videos some of your settings and your firefox profile as well.
    – mchid
    Dec 27, 2014 at 23:24
  • If you are using proprietary drivers, you can install DKMS to prevent this type of problem in the future or maybe install it just in case sudo apt-get install dkms
    – mchid
    Dec 27, 2014 at 23:27

2 Answers 2

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I had similar issue in Ubuntu Studio 14.04 LTS, running kernel version 3.13.0-43. I added an HDMI display (no sound capability) to my desktop as an addition to my older DVI monitor. Attempting to add the new screen from boot/power-on caused a system freeze. Attempts to add the HDMI display after boot via the Display applet under Settings Manager prompted a scrambled screen and system or X crashed (couldn't tell which one, screen unresponsive to anything but hard power cycle).

As mcchid mentioned, booting to an earlier kernel version -in this case 3.13.0-40- resolved the issue (you can boot to prior kernels under the Advanced options in the Grub boot menu).

Interestingly, I found a strikingly similar issue with kernel 3.17.3 (Kernel Bug Tracker – Bug 88481) that had the exact same error message I had been getting from DMESG: BUG: unable to handle kernel paging request at ffffec2000000900. This seems to have possibly been brought on by commit ffe0245532b98efc4bc0e06f29c51d3f0e471152 in at least the case of the later kernel version.

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If you want to do a fresh install and are sure that you have backed up everything like you said, then you can do that.

But you can try running sudo apt-get install linux-image-3.13.0-34-generic before doing that. This should install the kernel you were only able to boot in recovery mode (as I read it) and update the GRUB menu list to be fully functional again.

The package manager keeps a log of updated packages in /var/log/apt/history.log we could dig through these to find if there is any related issue to that. The most simple way ouf troubleshooting would be to reinstall the package in question the same way as with the kernel I described before.

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  • LiveWireBT, thanks for the input. I tried the "sudo apt-get install linux-image-3.13.0-34-generic" and it did something but when I rebooted it just did the same old thing. I also tried the "/var/log/apt/history.log" but permission was denied for some reason. This was the reply back. "bash: /var/log/apt/history.log: Permission denied" Any suggestions? Thanks! Dec 28, 2014 at 2:24

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