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I have a 14.04 LTS CD, which I used to help to reinstall the OS over my old installation of Ubuntu.

The process was pretty standard : insert disc, boot from CD, erase existing OS and install 14.04.

Everything looked fine, and I even got the message that installation was complete.

Then, I removed the CD as prompted, and rebooted the machine. That's when things went crazy. I see the DELL logo, and then a purple border, followed by a black screen. Then, ... nothing. Ever.

I had to do multiple force reboots by holding down the power button. Holding on to the right-shift button did not open up the Grub menu. I still get back the same purple border and black screen.

Edit : I managed to enter Grub menu by holding on to the ESC key, but I am getting the Grub error below.

Minimal BASH like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB lists possible command completions. anywhere else TAB lists possible device or file completions.

Subsequently, I reinserted the disc and selected the option to try Ubuntu without installing, which is how I am here now.

sudo parted -l

shows the following:

Model: ATA ST2000DM001-1ER1 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 2000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt

Number  Start   End     Size    File system     Name  Flags
 1      1049kB  538MB   537MB   fat32                 boot
 2      538MB   1863GB  1863GB  ext4
 3      1863GB  2000GB  137GB   linux-swap(v1)


Warning: Unable to open /dev/sr0 read-write (Read-only file system).  /dev/sr0
has been opened read-only.
Error: Can't have a partition outside the disk!

The Ubuntu OS seems to be installed on dev/sda2, while dev/sda1 seems to be the /boot/efi partition.

According to boot-repair,

GUID Partition Table detected.

Partition  Attrs   Start Sector    End Sector  # of Sectors System
/dev/sda1                 2,048     1,050,623     1,048,576 EFI System partition
/dev/sda2             1,050,624 3,638,751,231 3,637,700,608 Data partition (Linux)
/dev/sda3         3,638,751,232 3,907,028,991   268,277,760 Swap partition (Linux)

Edit : I reinstalled 14.04 again, and now boot-repair can run just fine. It says Repair Successful, but I am getting Grub error when I hold on to the ESC key when booting up :

Minimal BASH like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB lists possible command completions. anywhere else TAB lists possible device or file completions.

When I exit from this CLI, it says that it is not able to find a system to boot. I select F1 to Retry boot, and it shows me a nice Grub menu, from which I selected the first option Ubuntu after adding the parameters nomodeset and nolapic. It then blank screened... Really not sure what is going on here.

I have tried numerous things I have read over the net over the past day, but it is still stuck at this same problem. I am no expert on this! Please help! Thank you :)!

Additional Info:

lspci | grep VGA returns

VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation Device 13bb (rev a2)

It is a DELL Precision Tower 5810. Pastebin for Boot Info report is at http://paste.ubuntu.com/24515152/.

Tacocat
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2 Answers2

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try reinstalling ubuntu or try catch this keys ctrl+logokey+alt and delete+end+pagedown try this 2 to 5 time its better to reinstall the old version or press del key when the computer boots up go to bios features and enable the HDD smart compatibility i to had this problem but this things solved it

RUBYSTARTER
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A rather late update, my apologies. For anybody who mind chance upon this question in the future, do note that I have solved the problem by simply upgrading to Ubuntu 16.04 (replaced 14.04 entirely). Credits to RodSmith for this simple solution.

Till date, I have no idea how the machine worked with 14.04 when it first came into my possession brand new.

Thank you, @RodSmith, for your input and help.

Tacocat
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