[ubuntu-uk] I'm stuck

[Alan Pope]

Hi Norman,

On Mon, Dec 03, 2007 at 10:54:07AM +0000, norman wrote:
> Why no start up screen
> Why the video error message

Chances are it is in fact there but you can't see it. I suspect the "Video 
mode not supported" is being reported by your display (not the PC hardware 
or software) because Linux is trying to drive the display in a mode that, 
well, the display does not support. This is probably down to the 
splash-screen system "usplash".

You can test this theory by temporarily disabling the splash screen and get 
nice verbose text output during bootup by following this procedure:-

Boot the PC to the GRUB menu.
Hilight the Ubuntu line you normally use (that has the "video mode" error) 
then press 'e' to edit. This will take you to a new menu.
Go down to the kernel line and press 'e' to edit.
Move across to the end of the line and remove the words "splash" and 
"quiet" then press enter.
Press 'b' to boot. 

You should get lots of text, and no "video mode not supported" error. You 
will then get the logon screen.

> Why the dreaded blue screen

Without knowing what the exact detail of the blue screen error message it's 
difficult to tell. Can you boot to the blue screen, and note down the top 
few lines then we can google (and search the microsoft knowledge base) to 
figure out what the issue is.

You could also try booting windows in safe mode. To do this you can choose 
Windows from the GRUB menu, then press F8 to get a boot menu and choose Safe 
mode (I _think_ - I don't use windows so cannot confim this 100%).

> Are these in some way connected

Probably not, but without seeing the specific error message it's hard to 
tell.

Cheers,
Al.