Black screen when booting LMDE live-DVD

[Supamarioana]

Hi guys.

First of all: I'm pretty much new to linux in general so I'm sorry when I forget some essential details in my problem description.

My problem is that while trying to install LMDE 201204 MATE/Cinnamon 64 bit the screen turns black so I can't go on. I use a Thinkpad L420 laptop (screen1) with a second monitor (screen2) attached via docking station.
So here's what happens in detail:

1. "Automatic boot in x seconds..." countdown appears on screen1.
2. Some messages incuding warnings and one failure are displayed (see pictures 01 and 02). First they appear only on screen1. But right in the middle, they change to screen2. Screen1 turns black.
3. Screen2 turns black but with the white mouse arrow in the middle.
4. Two seconds later: Screen2 says "signal lost". Screen1 still black. But DVD is still loading data.
5. After some seconds the DVD stops. Both screens show blackness.
6. I press the "on/off" switch on my laptop. Screen2 reactivates and shows messages (picture 03). The DVD gets ejected.
7. I press ENTER and the laptop shuts down but without LMDE installed

Okay, so here is what I've tried so far:

- Reloaded and burnt the *.iso. Did a MD5sum check before and verified the DVD.
- Unplugged screen two from docking station
- Used just the laptop out of docking station

All of this didn't change a thing. What's really strange: Even without screen2, screen1 stays black in the above steps 3.-7. all the time. This means that I wouldn't get to know the messages from Pictures 02 and 03 if I hadn't got a second screen!

Some additional info about my system:

- I got Windows 7 installed on my laptop and just yesterday successfully installed Ubuntu 12.04 on a second HDD with is connected to the docking station via firewire. No problem there. Also Ubuntu can't be a problem for the LMDE live-DVD because I also tried it with the Ubuntu HDD unplugged.
- Just Intel onboard graphics (HD3000). No dedicated NVIDIA card or something.

I hope someone can help me out because I'd really love to try out LMDE.

[Supamarioana]

Hi guys. I'm still stuck on that problem. "nomodeset" didn't help out either. Any ideas?

[rootchick]

Have you tried booting into Compatibility Mode? When you see "Automatic boot in 10 seconds", hit Esc and select Linux Mint (Compatability Mode) from the list.

[Supamarioana]

Yes, I tried that. Also ends with the black screen. But thanks for posting.

[rootchick]

Judging from the error messages you got, it kinda sounds like you might be having trouble with your cd drive. Do you have another one you can try? Or maybe even bad memory. You might want to test for that too with memtest86.

Which video chipset does your laptop have? I have a couple computers that use RadeonHD, and I couldn't get them to boot into the desktop with the latest LMDE iso (201204), and finally I gave up and used the previous version, 201109. If you use that version you'll need to change the apt repositories to point to the correct ones, and download a bunch of updates, but I believe you'll get an up to date LMDE in the end.

[telenux]

Well, the OP mentioned his laptop is a Thinkpad L420 which has the Intel HD Graphics 3000 chipset AFAIK. They have an open source driver only so I really doubt that it's the graphics driver that is a problem now.

I would disconnect his laptop from the docking station (he said he had a 2nd monitor connected to it). Mostly as a test to see if anything different happens when booting the DVD separate from the docking station and 2nd Monitor.

[Supamarioana]

Well, maybe my initial post was a bit too long so nobody read the whole text.

This should answer your questions:

Okay, so here is what I've tried so far:

- Reloaded and burnt the *.iso. Did a MD5sum check before and verified the DVD.
- Unplugged screen two from docking station
- Used just the laptop out of docking station

All of this didn't change a thing. What's really strange: Even without screen2, screen1 stays black in the above steps 3.-7. all the time. This means that I wouldn't get to know the messages from Pictures 02 and 03 if I hadn't got a second screen!

Some additional info about my system:

- I got Windows 7 installed on my laptop and just yesterday successfully installed Ubuntu 12.04 on a second HDD with is connected to the docking station via firewire. No problem there. Also Ubuntu can't be a problem for the LMDE live-DVD because I also tried it with the Ubuntu HDD unplugged.
- Just Intel onboard graphics (HD3000). No dedicated NVIDIA card or something.

I also just encountered something strange with the memtest:

The memtest86+ of my Ubuntu installation went through one pass without an error. But when I start the LMDE memtest of the live-DVD (is it a different one than memtest86+?) it just appears for half a second and then the system gets rebooted.
Maybe the DVD really IS the problem. But how can that be? I did an MD5sum check on the *.iso AND let ImgBurn verify the burning process...
And I did this with two DVDs.
And it worked with Ubuntu 12.04 on the same day (although I admit this was a CD and not a DVD)

EDIT:
I just made a bootable USB stick of LMDE with UNetbootin. Showed the same symptoms. So it's not the DVD.

[Supamarioana]

Okay. Thanks to this post

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=189&t=101801

I could finally install LMDE and even got MATE running. Yay!

To sum up, here's what I did:

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to get to the login screen
2. Change session to "cinnamon" and enter username "mint"
3. Install
4. in terminal enter "sudo pluma /etc/default/grub"
5. change the line "GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=quiet" to "GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=quiet i915.modeset=0"
6. Save and close file. In terminal enter "sudo update-grub"
7. reboot and try MATE

But now I've got the next problem: The laptop display stays black while my external monitor works. But just with reduced resolution. Therefore I disabled the laptop screen. The result is that when I reboot, the laptop display gets set to minimal brightness when displaying BIOS activity and also for Windows. Might be a general Thinkpad problem.

Going back to LMDE and reactivating the laptop screen fixes that. But then I'm stuck with low resolution and my laptop display "gleaming" in black...