Monitor “out of range” when installing Ubuntu Lucid Lynx

On some computers, it seems that running the Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) installer (the standard desktop installer) results in a blank screen and the error message “out of range.”

(At least, that was the error message generated on one monitor. The message was generated by the on-screen display of the monitor itself, so results may vary. You may observe a different error message, smoke coming out the back of the monitor, etc.)

You can read about it in this forum thread; to summarize, the workaround is as follows:

  1. When running the installer, just before the error occurs, you will see this cryptic screen:

    Ubuntu Lucid Lynx installer

    That cryptic little keyboard next to that cryptic little man apparently means “press any key.” If you do that, a menu will pop up. First, select a language, then press F6 (“Other Options”). A new menu will pop up; use the arrow keys to move to “nomodeset”, and press Enter to select it. Press Esc to dismiss the menu. Then you can proceed with the installation as normal.

  2. Of course, this only works for the installer. When you first try to boot your newly installed system, you will get the same error as before. To boot, you will need to add nomodeset to the kernel command line. When you boot the machine, wait for the GRUB menu to appear. (If the menu does not appear, you may need to hold down the Shift key when booting.)

    GRUB menu

    Press e to edit the kernel command line:

    Editing the kernel command line

    Add nomodeset right after quiet splash:

    Adding "nomodeset" to the kernel command line

    Press Ctrl+x to boot.

  3. Of course, editing the kernel command line only affects the current boot process; the next time you boot the machine, you will have to manually add nomodeset again. To fix the problem permanently:

    1. If you have an NVIDIA video card, installing the proprietary NVIDIA driver may make the problem go away.
    2. Alternatively, you can edit the file /etc/default/grub and change the line
      GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""
      

      to

      GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="nomodeset"
      

      Then run

      sudo update-grub
      

      See the release notes for details.

Published
Categorized as Ubuntu

1 comment

  1. what to do when the grub does, not appear but monitor is still giving info (out of range)? even pressing “shift” is not helping. dont know what to do, i JUST jumped from 10.04lts to 12.04lts. got nvidia 6200, 2gb ram, 22″ wide polaroid screen. when booting from cd seems to be ok. at first when instaled newer version was ok. yhen i made update, plus new drivers to graphic card and all get .. bad. maybe can i just get back to the moment from before i did update of the graphics, but how to do it

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