You can face this issue in two conditions.
1. Those who have installed ubuntu 10.04 might encountered this problem. The screen goes blank just after grub (may be after bios startup, if grub timeout early).
Please follow the steps below to fix it.
Press e on getting the GRUB bootloader(if not getting grub, press and hold shift key to get grub).
Go to the line which says ‘quiet and splash’, delete thesee words and type in ‘nomodeset’ in their place.
Now press Ctrl + X to boot
Now login to your Ubuntu as usual.
If you have a Nvidia graphics card, this may be the issue with it,
Now goto System->Administration->Hardware drivers, and select and activate the nvidia current driver if you have an nvidia card. The driver will be downloaded and activated automatically, and you will be prompted for a reboot.
2. Blank screen on bootup after Upgrade from 9.10 -> 10.4,
A solution for this is not found, i am on it. Maybe upgrading to a new kernel will do it.
I want to thank you for the assistance! Going all in on Ubuntu for new laptop, wish me luck 😛
I upgraded 9.10 to 10.04 and had the same problem. Not a blank screen, but a screen crash (those ugly multicolored vertical stripes all across the screen). Rebooting did not help.What I did to fix the problem (but it's just a temporary workaround):At entering the grub menu, press 'e'. Scroll down to the second line that you see, press 'e' again and replace the words 'quiet splash' with 'nomodeset'.I could not edit my options for a nvidia driver because mine is a ATI Radeon or something. What i did:open a terminal and enter 'sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst'Now you can edit your grub menu. Scroll down until you see the booting options. Over there you will see the same line that you edited at startup. Do the same thing here and replace quiet splash with nomodeset.As i said: just a temporary solution, until the bug is fixed.
Actually there isn't any delay in bootup. The boot process starts right way from the point u press enter in grub. But the problem is that the splash screen appears only after a particular point in the boot processes, so we think that it stay their with a blank screen.To avoid the blank screen just remove the word "quiet" from "quiet splash" by doing this you won't lose your splash.Enjoy!
I upgraded from 9.10 to 10.04, and faced the same issue.I followed the steps you mention for the first case(expirimental), and it just worked. But now i can't see the splash.Any way now there isn't any blank screen or delay in bootup.Thanks buddy.
thanks….it solved my problem…
i had this problem but when i press escape at grub it shows two regular and two recovery for 10.04. If I press enter for the second one it works but not the first. I know this doesnt make much sense but ive been drinking all day.