Mint 14 won't boot with new mainboard and CPU

[Redsandro]

I am dual booting Linux Mint 14 and Windows 8. Windows for Adobe CS (Work) and the occasional game, Mint for everything else.

Suddenly, a wild hardware failure appears. I buy a new mainboard and a new processor, keep everything else. Including my SSD. I had a core i7 running on Zotac, now I have core i5 running on Asus because budget didn't allow for the same hardware. Plus this kind of change was never a problem* for Linux.

Now, Linux Mint won't start anymore. In normal mode I just see a blinking cursor. In Recovery Mode, I see some text and then nothing happens after this:

IMG_20130126_080632.jpg (147.76 KiB) Viewed 326 times

I have tried doing a live-cd boot and redo the Grub thing, but that didn't help. Probably because there was no problem with Grub. Grub starts fine. And the kicker: Choosing Windows 8 in Grub starts Windows 8 with no problem*.

Offtopic:

*) This is a breakthrough, because in the past when changing hardware, if anything happened, Linux was ALWAYS the sturdy one, not caring if I changed a fusion reactor for a dorito, it would boot anyway. The problem was always with Windows, BSOD'ing like something terrible happened. I was shocked to see that it is now the other way around.

I expected Mint would start with no problem, but Windows would require a repair install while keeping all my software and settings. Mint (any linux afaik) provides no such option, and I'd hate to waste some weeks learning the hard way what kind of packages and customizations I had applied.

PS: I was pretty sure I had already posted this about a week ago so I came to see what I could improve to get some responses, but it appears I did no such topic. So either I typed everything, pressed preview in stead of submit and left, or the forum database had a hiccup, or I accidentally posted the 'wrong' picture and my topic got removed. If there is a problem, please let me know and I will change/add information.

[sagirfahmid3]

Looks like its happening due to a graphics driver conflict. Try booting with the option "nomodeset"
This shows how to do it easily: http://askubuntu.com/questions/38780/ho ... stallation

[Redsandro]

You, sir, are correct.

I lost my nice Mint booting splashscreen to a dull ascii representation, but I can start Mint again!

[sagirfahmid3]

The "nomodeset" setting is a temporary fix. You should either install the official Nvidia driver, or append nomodeset to the kernel line (Google it).

[Redsandro]

It has the official Nvidia driver? That's what the warning about tainting the kernel is about.

[sagirfahmid3]

Oh, that's strange...
Try uninstalling it and then reinstall it. I had the same problem as you when I switched from an OEM Asus motherboard to a Biostar mobo with the same chipset and integrated graphics.