If you were already using 10.10 and you recently moved over to 11.04 then most likely you are getting this issue. One of the options to quickly try out is that can you go to the previous versions of Ubuntu and boot up successfully?
If you can then you are just missing one file which is a bug.
Now what you need to do is that bootup with 2.6.38-8-generic-pae(recovery mode). Log into the safe mode .. which is the lower UI resolution mode.
Goto the terminal and execute
$ sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic-pae
Once this is done restart and then let Ubuntu boot up successfully on the 2.6.38-8-generic-pae version
Posted in: linux
mike
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
WTF is 2.6.38-8-generic-pae ? i downloaded ubuntu 11 04 burnt it to cd rebooted got the choice win 7 or ubuntu / chose ubuntu all i get is a flashing screen with the word ubuntu on it and it hangs / the keyboard freezes / only way out is to press and hold on/off switch
ubuntuarmy
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Actually, if you have a problem with booting or when it loads, you only see a cursor and background but no way to login, here’s what you do:
turn on the computer and just after the BIOS has loaded press the left Shift button which will load grub, select the edit mode (i forget which button it is, but it says at the bottom)…remove the bit that says ‘quiet splash’ and replace it with ‘nomodeset’ (no quotes). Hit Ctrl+X and you will be able to login, then look for your graphics drivers and after that has been installed and enabled you will have fixed the problem
Vikas Hazrati
Thursday, September 1, 2011
excellent! thanks for the tip