Ubuntu
grub package

grub menu not displayed

Bug #25517 reported by Carl Karsten
18
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
grub (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Medium
Unassigned

Bug Description

Dell Dimension 8200
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV11 [GeForce2 MX/MX
400] (rev b2)

had XP - used Breezy install to resize, installed Breezy, both boot fine.

problem: I never see the grub menu, or "grub - press ESC to see menu" or any of
that. The screen goes blank, and eventually grub times out and loads the
default OS. If the default is XP, I don't see the text based "loading...Press
F8... " and progress bar that whips across the bottom of the screen, but I do
see the graphical XP logo. Similar for Ubuntu: I don't see anything until the
“boot splash” Ubuntu image is displayed with the boot progress text scrolling up
under it.

I believe something (probably grub) is leaving the video card in a bad state,
and it doesn't get reset until the selected OS sets it to display its logo.

I also believe it is happening very early in the box's boot process, because if
I hit F12, the Dell's bios will present me a boot device menu, and if I pick
“hard disk” I get the normal grub prompts/menu/boot text. My guess is the bios
is fixing the “bad state”, which means the bad state is being set before the
bios has loaded grub.

I wasn't aware of anything being “run” from the HD that early in the boot
process, but I am not an expert in exactly what all happens between power on and
boot loader.

When the bios is probing for boot devices, does it load/run anything? like if I
boot from a LiveCD, could something from the HD be run first?

Revision history for this message
Tormod Volden (tormodvolden) wrote :

Can you still reproduce this problem? Maybe your BIOS has an option for "quick-boot" or verbose or full tests or something that you can try?

Nothing is run from the HD, but maybe the BIOS initializes the screen when it displays its F12 boot menu.

Revision history for this message
martinparks (boyington) wrote :

I am having this same problem.

Compaq Evo N610c

Has any one found a solution.
I can not boot into my Windows XP only Ubuntu as that is the default
It seemed to worked fine until 2 days ago. The last thing I did was to install the KDE desktop. I am not sure if the two have anything to do with each other. But Thats the last thing I did.
MY screen is completely blank and I can press the enter button and see that the hard drive is doing something then after a it boots into ubuntu

Tollef Fog Heen (tfheen)
Changed in grub:
assignee: tfheen → nobody
Revision history for this message
Nathan Handler (nhandler) wrote :

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you? Can you try with latest Ubuntu release? Thanks in advance.

Changed in grub:
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Javier Jardón (jjardon) wrote :

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!

Changed in grub:
status: Incomplete → Invalid
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