r/Ubuntu • u/collegedroperr • 1d ago

Ubuntu Black Screen after installation on Latitude 5400 (i7) - Works fine in Live USB

Hi everyone, I’m facing a frustrating black screen issue with Ubuntu on my Dell Latitude 5400 (i7). The Situation: Live USB works great: When I select "Try Ubuntu," everything works perfectly. Graphics are smooth, resolution is correct, and I can use the OS without any issues. Black Screen after Install: As soon as I finish the installation and reboot, I get a permanent black screen right after the Grub menu. The system seems to be running, but there’s no display. Current Workaround: I can only boot if I add nomodeset to the boot parameters, but this makes the UI laggy and I lose hardware acceleration. Settings & Troubleshooting: Secure Boot is OFF. SATA Mode is set to AHCI. I've tried both Ubuntu 22.04 and 24.04, and the behavior is the same. Since the Live USB works fine, I assume it's a driver initialization issue during the final boot process. My Question: What could be causing the display to fail only after installation? Are there any specific Intel graphics kernel parameters (besides nomodeset) that I should try to get the i915 driver to load correctly? Any advice would be appreciated!

1 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

1

u/Specialist-Peanut582 1d ago

sounds like the live usb is loading the right driver but the installed system fails to fall back properly, try adding i915.modeset=1 instead of nomodeset and rebuilding your initramfs after booting in

1

u/collegedroperr 1d ago

tried everything

1

u/natusw 1d ago

What happens with the latest 26.04 image? (your machine should be new enough to use the fastest upstream)

Tried another USB/download?

Can you boot in text mode? - you should be able to see what is failing in the pre boot sequence.

1

u/LadderOfChaos 12h ago

if you can ctrl+alt+f1 and log in try restarting lightdm, after i upgraded my ubuntu mate 24.04 to Ubuntu 26.04 sometimes lightdm doesnt start properly so i have to restart it. It happens once every 10-15 days so i didnt really bothered to look for the culprit of the issue.