12.04 usb drive boot graphic problems

[geekyboy]

I am trying to boot from a USB drive containing 12.04. I created the boot disk from 10.04. When I boot from the USB drive instead of seeing the boot screen to select boot options (install, run from disc, etc.) I see a black screen with a grey square in the lower left corner of my screen.

If I cursor down to where install is and select the install screen displays fine.

If instead I wait out the boot screen and the OS continues to load I get a garbled screen filled with neon colored patterns, and nothing else is viewable. If I right click or move the mouse around the screen there are many changes in the patterns, but still nothing viewable except the neon garbled mess. (however I can flip over to terminal and it works fine.)

I also had graphic issues with Natty and Oneiric, so have resorted to reinstalling and staying on Lucid. Would really like to find out why newer versions of Ubuntu (running Unity, though not sure if that is the issue) do not work well on this laptop though, since it is not old and is a pretty powerful laptop.

Dell Inspiron 1720 laptop
GeForce 840M GS graphics card
4GB Ram

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/989372/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

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[geekyboy (adamculp)]

Since this bug is apparent after the splash I am following instructions to mark this as xorg.

[geekyboy (adamculp)]

The original USB drive I used to install 12.04 was created on Lucid, and did not work well on my system. However, it did work on another laptop I have. (the initial load screen did not work and I still only saw the grey rectangle in the lower left corner, but the Ubuntu screen and afterwards worked fine.)

After installing on the second laptop I created a new USB drive from that system. (This was creating a boot USB drive using 12.04.) Then using that new USB drive I had a different experience.

Upon booting the Dell 1720 with the new USB drive the initial boot screen came up and I continued to boot up as a LiveCD. The Ubuntu screen came up fine, and then the prompt came up asking if I wanted to Install or Try. I chose Try, and then the screen went into black and white stripes with a garbled mess. So the Try option did not work.

Second try I selected "Install from the boot screen and the install process went fine. I now have a fully functional running 12.04 OS on the Dell 1720, even though the LiveCD option would only display garbled graphics.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Uditha Wijethilaka Bandara (uditha-bandara-deactivatedaccount)]

Personally I'm not sure if I'm choosing the correct package for the bug. But this bug is described in following ubuntu forum page:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1967619

This suggests that the bug is related to grub choosing a graphical mode or a font which causes the initial screen to be rendered incorrectly.

I experienced this with both following iso files:
http://releases.ubuntu.com/12.04/ubuntu-12.04-desktop-i386.iso
http://releases.ubuntu.com/12.04/ubuntu-12.04-server-i386.iso

I attempted to install from a USB drive created using "Startup Disk Creator" on ubuntu desktop 10.04.4 LTS
the USB drive is a 4GB "JetFlash TS4GJFV20"

the install was attempted on a Compaq Evo D510 Ultra Slim Desktop computer (Pentium 4 processor, 768 MB RAM, 40 GB HDD)

As suggested in the same forum the following workaround works:
1. Boot the cmputer with the USB drive
2. When the blank screen with small grey rectangle on lower left appear wait patiently for a few minuets.
3. Press Enter
4. The small rectangle will disappear. Now wait again for a few minuets patiently.
5. Press Enter again.
6. Wait again for a few minuets patiently. The text mode installer appears. Installation can proceed normally from here.

[BelJoost (beljoost)]

Unfortunately the workaround in #5 does not work for me. Using those steps I seem to be able to install, but after the installation has completed and the server has rebooted the screen stays blank and after a while the monitor shows a message that the signal it receives is not compatible. I tried to create an install usb with unetbootin and the result was the same.

I tried to add "nomodeset" by editing the grub.cfg and txt.cfg. I replaced "quiet" with "nomodeset". But it didn't help.

Because 10.04 works without a problem I gave up on 12.04 and returned to 10.04. I hope this issue is fixed before 10.04 EOL.

If copying files from the 10.04 installation usb could fix this I am happy to try. If someone could provide the filenames of the files to replace I will give it a shot.

I'm using an Asrock N61P-S mainboard with embedded NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE / nForce 430 GPU.