Live CD wont boot - black screen (of death)

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JanAcc

Live CD wont boot - black screen (of death)

Post by JanAcc »

Hi everybody,

I know this has come up several times on the forums but for now I didn't find any solution that works for me :(

Here are my specs: Thinkpad R60 (very old, think I bought it in fall 2005) with a Radeon Mobility x1400 (I think that one is causing the problems here)
I am trying to get the Linux Mint Debian 201204 Mint/Cinnamon Live CD running.

Problem description:
When I try to boot from the live cd, boot loader comes up just fine, boot process looks good first (I'm using nosplash and noquiet here). After several seconds of booting procedure (I think one of the last entries I see is "populating /dev") the screen just goes "black". No error message, no login for single user or whatsoever, just a plain black screen. From there on no input from the keyboard will be processed. I tried ctrl+alt+f1, ctrl+alt+backspace, ctrl+alt+delete, ctrl+c, ctrl+d, ... It seems that the system has freezed. Only power reset will work.
I suspect an issue with the x1400 and the graphics driver and/or xserver. So I experimented with various kernel cheat codes: noapic, nolapic, noacpi, acpi=off, pci=noacpi, nomodeset, ... Until now, to no avail. Without having a clue, it's difficult to try all possible combinations. I also combined that with the "compability" boot entry.
I have also tried to use the kernel parameter "single". However, that produced the same result.

At this point I'm running out of ideas. Has anyone a clue what to do?

Regards
JanAcc

Moved here from Main Edition Support - Moderator
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
zerozero

Re: Live CD wont boot - black screen (of death)

Post by zerozero »

have you tried with
radeon.modeset=0
JanAcc

Re: Live CD wont boot - black screen (of death)

Post by JanAcc »

Im impressed. Apparently, that did the job. Thanks!
brane

Re: Live CD wont boot - black screen (of death)

Post by brane »

Same problem here....have you found a solution in the meantime? I know the new iso is coming out soon but i'm still interested why i wasn't able to boot
brane

Re: Live CD wont boot - black screen (of death)

Post by brane »

brane wrote:Same problem here....have you found a solution in the meantime? I know the new iso is coming out soon but i'm still interested why i wasn't able to boot
oh sorry i did not see the reply.....can you explain in detail how this helped?What do i need to do?
JanAcc

Re: Live CD wont boot - black screen (of death)

Post by JanAcc »

brane wrote:can you explain in detail how this helped?What do i need to do?
Can't tell you exactely why this helped...
How it helped? Well, my Linux Mint Debian boots now without any complains.
What you need to do? When you see the bootloader, i.e. Grub, press Tab to edit an entry. You see now the boot command that will be issued. You can directly edit it, for example by providing additional boot options, kernel cheat codes etc.. Provide "radeon.modeset=0" (without quotes) at the end but before the dashes (don't know if this matters).
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