[solved] Black screen on boot

[MrPink]

When I boot LMDE, all I get is a black screen. The first thing that pops up is the Windows boot loader, which lets me choose between Windows 7 and LMDE.
Choosing LMDE I get the GRUB menu, which now has two extra Linux Mint entries:

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Linux Mint Debian Edition
Linux Mint Debian Edition (recovery mode)
Linux Mint Debian Edition
Linux Mint Debian Edition (recovery mode)
Windows 7

When I choose either of the LMDE entries, it boots as it is supposed to until it is time to start gdm3, after which there is only a black screen.

I can think of two possible reasonss for this:

1. I upgraded some x-server-something files in Synaptic. They were "level 5" in Mint Update.

2. I have had some trouble getting Xfce working properly, so I decided to give gnome a try. I installed it with

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apt-get install gnome-core

This was all in the same session, after which I started getting the black screen. I tried removing gnome again by booting to recovery mode and doing

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apt-get remove gnome-core
apt-get autoremove

This didn't help, so it is most likely the x-server files.

Any suggestions as to how I can fix this?

[irieken]

I'm having a similar issue on a Dell Vostro 1400, with Nvidia GeForce Go 8400.

Everything was humming along swimmingly until today; now I need to boot into recovery mode and initiate an FSCK to get anything other than a black screen with my Mint install.

[MrPink]

Do you have any idea what caused it on your pc? If you have made the same upgrades as I then perhaps it's possible to downgrade? I don't know

I am close to just reinstalling the entire OS, but don't really want to. I hope there is a solution to this.

[darco]

When I USED to get a black screen from an update, I would normally reinstall the video driver and be good to go...I dont get them anymore since I use SMXI.....
good luck

[twa]

Hi folks,
darco gave U a good suggestion..install and try SMXI
have used it since my first LMDE install on sept 2010 and never had problems.
just read carefully the tutorials b4 U start.
http://smxi.org/

[MrPink]

YESSS I solved it!

booted to recovery mode and

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apt-get remove --purge xserver-xorg-video*
rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf

This allowed me to boot to terminal in non-recovery mode. Then I generated a new xorg.conf

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aticonfig --initial

And the login manager popped up instantly.

Don't you just love it when you solve an unsolvable problem?

It was this that gave me the hint: http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Debian

@darco & twa

I have never heard of SMXI, but it looks promising. Thanks for the link.