Ubuntu Hangs & Shows a Black Screen on Install with ASUS Z97-Deluxe & GTX 770

Question

I'm building a new rig, and I'm having trouble installing Ubuntu. I burned the latest Ubuntu 14.04 image to a DVD from my Macbook Pro. I booted off the DVD and pushed a key when the keyboard/person image came up to show the boot menu, and then selected Install Ubuntu from the menu. From there the screen just goes black and never shows anything else. For reference, here's my hardware:

• ASUS Z97-Deluxe
• Intel Core i7 4.0 GHZ
• 32GB GSkill DDR3 2400
• ASUS GTX 770

I'm actually running 2x GTX 770 in SLI, but I took one out to troubleshoot. Things that I've tried so far:

• Waiting
• Removing one of the video cards
• Plugging the monitor into different outputs
• Disabling Secure Boot

Thanks in advance for any help that you're able to offer, I would love to get this thing up and running ASAP!

Answer 1

After hours of troubleshooting, I figured out the issue. It turns out that the video issues were a bit of a red herring, but I'll start by explaining how they were obfuscating the problem and how to get around that. It turns out that Ubuntu was hanging during startup, and I couldn't see why. To get around that I pushed enter during boot (while the keyboard + person was on screen) to bring up the boot menu, pressed F6 to edit boot options, then manually replaced "quiet splash" with "nomodeset", and then launched Ubuntu from disk. That allowed me to read the startup output and see what was going on.

It turns out that the ASUS z97-Deluxe has 10 SATA ports on two connectors that are controlled by two separate controllers. The top 4 ports on the A set of connectors and the two ports closest to the board on the B set of connectors are controlled by the Intel controller, and the remaining ports are controlled by the ASMedia controller. The ASMedia controlled ports can apparently be used for disk drives only and I had an ATAPI DVD drive hooked up to one of them, which was causing Ubuntu to hang. It's a really confusing configuration and one that I'm sure will cause others trouble as well, so hopefully they manage to find this post (or get amazing help on IRC at #Ubuntu like I did, can't thank those folks enough!).

Answer 2

Please read this: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1613132 ... at How to enable kernel options on the livecd (before install)

You need to TRY adding nouveau.blacklist=1 to the END OF the linux /boot ... line.

NOTE: I am NOT sure this will help, I have not tried it. But generally having a Nvidia GPU means that the nouveau display driver tries to step in - which creates the black display.
(The nouveau driver is included in the kernel as far as I know)

Answer 3

Adding nomodeset solved my problem. I have GTX 980 and ASUS x99. The screen flashes ACPI PCC probe failed and goes dead.

The following fixed my problem:

1. boot with UEFI
2. when seeing the Try Ubuntu... press "e"
3. add nomodeset after splash (before the "--")

I tried "acpi=off" and "acpi=ht" but none of them worked for me.

After installation. The installed system crashes also so it needs pressing "e" and adding nomodeset as well. The way to fix is to add nomodeset to /etc/default/grub according to http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1613132, and sudo update-grub afterwards.