Day 4 of my purgatory.

History:

• Had problems with live CD at first, had to set the "nomodeset" option ... and then it worked fine.

• Installed Ubuntu "Alongside" Windows XP from live CD (NOT wubi)

• Upon reboot after installation, I get the BIOS ... and then a black screen.

• If I hit shift after the BIOS screen I get text that says "loading GRUB ..", but then no GRUB ... just a black screen.

What I have tried to do:

• Total re-installation ... 3 times now. Also tried with wubi, same black screen. Have gone back to the normal (non-wubi) install.

• After installation, I tried re-booting the live cd ... and trying to change GRUB file using: sudo gedit /etc/default/grub ... to "nomodeset" and "timeout=10" ... but won't let me save my changes because I'm using the live cd "in memory" system and don't have permissions to the disks (I think). I tried logging in ... but it won't let me.

• I then read many posts on this site. I'm stuck.

• This morning, I ran the "boot repair disk". Results here: http://paste.ubuntu.com/1132333/

What I think is wrong:

• Since I can get the live CD to run (perfectly) with the "nomodeset" option, I think all I need to do is get to GRUB to change that ... but I can't get to GRUB.

Appreciate any advice.

Pat

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Day 5 ...

I downloaded "Super Grub 2 Disk" from: http://www.supergrubdisk.org/super-grub2-disk/

This looks promising.

I can boot the disk and it brings me to a GRUB program that allows me to:

1) Boot to Windows ... which works 2) Boot to Ubuntu ... which does NOT work

When I choose boot to Ubuntu, I get lines across the screen which is an obvious video card problem. Likely because I need to set the "nomodeset" option.

So, I attempted to use super grub2 to edit the grub file ... but it is TOTALLY different than the Ubuntu grub file ... and I don't know where to put the "nomodeset" option.

Still stuck ...

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The bottom line is that:

1) I need to edit /etc/default/grub on sda(1) ... which is my boot drive ... to add the "nomodeset" option

2) To do that I need to get into grub ... but, I can't. Holding down shift just echo's "loading grub .." and then takes me to a black screen

3) I can boot to the live CD by setting nomodeset .... but I cannot access the hard disk as root ... I can't save my changes!

Can anyone tell me how to login as root for the filesystem from the live CD ... so I can edit the grub file on the HARD DISK ... and then run update-grub??