Ubuntu randomly started blinking the screen on boot

Question

I used my Ubuntu Desktop yesterday as usual, but now I can't boot in because the screen keeps flickering to a black screen and a verbose boot screen where I see no failure or errors. I can ALT-F2 and see the login, but it stills flickers so I can't type correctly my password. I didn't install anything particular, I've searched a little and people talk about NVIDIA drivers, but I didn't install anything like this yesterday, what can I do?

Thanks for helping.

dpkg -l *nvidia* | grep ii returns

 nvidia-375               375.66-0ubuntu0.16.04.1
 nvidia-opencl-icd-375    375.66-0ubuntu0.16.04.1
 nvidia-prime             0.8.2
 nvidia-settings          361.42-0ubuntu1

Solution 1

1. Uninstall the Windows driver that allows you to read/write to Ubuntu EXT4 partitions.

2. To check the file system on your Ubuntu partition...

   • boot to the GRUB menu
   • choose Advanced Options
   • choose Recovery mode
   • choose Root access
   • at the # prompt, type sudo fsck -f /
   • repeat the fsck command if there were errors
   • type reboot

Update #1:

• boot to the GRUB menu
• select Ubuntu
• hit the e key
• use arrow keys to move
• find the line that has "quiet splash"
• add nomodeset, so "quiet splash nomodeset"
• hit F10 to exit and continue boot
• see if it flickers

Solution 2

I recently had the blinking screen on a dual boot Ubuntu 18 and Windows 10 machine and the boot sequence seemed to be stuck. When I tried CTRL+ALT+DEL a message was displayed that unattended updates was in progress. At some point the blinking stopped and a finished message appeared. The machine rebooted, and everything was normal after that.

Solution 3

I installed bumblebee-nvidia in a terminal session and was able to login. Still haven't figured what happened in the first place, but at least it works for now. Thanks for the help everyone.

Comments

[Admin]

is it the computer causing the problem or Ubuntu?

[Admin]

Ubuntu, I have a dual-boot, Windows works just fine.

[Admin]

try to ssh login to it and see what happens

[Admin]

can you log in?

[Admin]

No, I can't it flickers infinitely

[Admin]

do you have grub?

[Admin]

Yes, I do have grub

[Admin]

does grub work?

[Admin]

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

[Admin]

Might be due to lightdm display manager. This might help: askubuntu.com/questions/223501/…

[Drakota]

I don't think this is it, I had the same problem before installing the driver to read my Linux partition, I installed it like 10 min ago to get some files onto my Windows partition.

[Boris Hamanov]

@Drakota did you perform the fsck?

[Drakota]

Yes and I didn't get any error messages and I still get the flickering.

[Boris Hamanov]

Did it flicker when you did the fsck? Do you have Nvidia?

[Drakota]

No, I didn't get any flickering.

[Boris Hamanov]

Do you have Nvidia? If so, what version? From the Ubuntu repos, or Nvidia web site?

[Drakota]

I'm not sure about the specific version, but I used the one in the Software & Updates tab and I choose the first proprietary one.

[Boris Hamanov]

Go back to the # prompt and type dpkg -l *nvidia* | grep ii and copy/paste results into your question.

[Boris Hamanov]

Do Update #1. Report back.

[Drakota]

Tried Update #1 still flickering unfortunately

[Drakota]

With nomodeset, I've managed to access the terminal using CTRL+ALT F2. Tried doing update upgrade dist-upgrade nothing changed

[Christopher]

For what it's worth, I installed bumblebee just now, rebooted and there was no blinking display. It had just started to do that a few updates ago, so I have no idea which one caused it as I often put the computer to sleep at night.