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I have a Dell XPS M1210, with VESA: G72 Board - bali1 graphics. I'm running Ubuntu 12.04, and my updates are current. I don't know a lot about computers or Linux. I use Linux because I like the open source model, and because it's essentially free. I can't afford to buy a new computer at this time.

This problem began with a system freeze. I had to force a shut down by holding down the power button. Since then, when I restart the computer, it fails to boot into the latest version of the OS (Ubuntu with Linux 3.5.0-45-generic, as noted in the title of this thread.) While starting up, a bunch of text flashes by, which I assume to be BIOS. There seem to be some error messages, but they go by too quickly to catch. The process eventually comes to a point where all I have on my screen is a flashing cursor in the upper right corner. At this point, I have only found two ways to proceed. One is to hold the power button to get the computer to shut down. the other is to press the power button for maybe half a second. If I do this, some more text flashes by. It's on the screen long enough for me to catch the last couple lines, which say:

load fallback graphics device [fail]  
will now halt

Then, the computer shuts down.

When I restart it, I get the GRUB screen, which allows me to select to boot into an older version of the OS. If I select the immediately previous version, Ubuntu with Linux 3.5.0-44-generic, the system does boot fully. However, the display resolution is wrong. You'll have to forgive me for not knowing what the correct resolution is, but the one my system boots into is obviously wrong, or, at least it's not the one I'm used to using. If I go to the system settings, and try to adjust the resolution to what I think it should be, I have only two options for resolution where I'm used to seeing more. The two that I have are 1024x768, and 800x600. Neither seems correct to me.

Is this a graphics problem? Is it repairable? Any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

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1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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I ran into the same problem today, with exactly the same symptoms. It turned out to be an nvidia version conflict. I managed to solve it by following these instructions: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS - Black Screen at boot After changing Nvidia Driver

First of all, check for an nvidia error message:

grep NVRM /var/log/kern.log

I saw this:

API mismatch: the client has the version 304.116, but this kernel module has the version 173.14.39. Please make sure that this kernel module and all NVIDIA driver components have the same version.

Get a list of installed versions:

dkms status

In my case, this returned:

nvidia-173, 173.14.39, 3.5.0-45-generic, i686: installed
nvidia-304, 304.116, 3.5.0-45-generic, i686: installed

Remove the oldest version:

sudo apt-get purge nvidia-173 nvidia-173-updates

Reboot, and everything should be back to normal.

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  • That's beautiful! It worked like a charm. Thank you. I wish I possessed the knowledge to solve problems like this, but since I don't, I'm thankful for sites like this, and well-informed users like you.
    – Tom Ballew
    Feb 9, 2014 at 5:36
  • @TomBallew : I'm no guru either. My only merit was to include 'nvidia' in my google searches. Proprietary driver updates are a likely explanation, especially when booting into a shell prompt is successful. Thank you for posting the question, as it made me aware that I wasn't alone in there; the problem had to come from the latest updates.
    – Ruud Helderman
    Feb 9, 2014 at 9:03

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