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[SOLVED] Updated to Ubuntu 11.10 on VirtualBox and now you get a blank screen when you reboot?

So you used the update manager to upgrade to the new Ubuntu 11.10 that came out a couple days ago and when you’re finished with the process, next time it boots you get a blank screen.

Do this:

1. Switch to a terminal.
Press “Ctrl+Alt+F1″ if you’re on Windows.
or
Press “Cmd + F1″ or “Ctrl + Alt_option + F1″ if you on MacOSX.

You will now be on a text based terminal (TTY1), and you will see that your VM has booted fine, you just didn’t have a graphical environment, therefore the blank screen.

2. Login in with your account on this text based terminal by entering your credentials.

3. Install virtualbox-ose-guest-utils.
(Yes, I also had my virtual guest additions installed before so that I could have full screen resolution, but the problem seems to be related to this and now ubuntu has a package on their repos that you need.)

sudo apt-get install virtualbox-ose-guest-utils [enter]

4. Reboot
sudo reboot

You’re done.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 20th, 2011 at 9:03 am and is filed under Linux. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

11 Responses to “[SOLVED] Updated to Ubuntu 11.10 on VirtualBox and now you get a blank screen when you reboot?”

  1. Pete Says:
    October 26th, 2011 at 7:11 pm

    Hi, I came across your article via Google, and I thought I should post instructions for a related problem, but a slightly different solution. Running Virtualbox on a mac, after updating Ubuntu to 11.10, I was stuck on the purple loading screen with 5 red dots.

    1) Start up Ubuntu holding shift to access the Grub menu.
    2) Select recovery mode. Previously, I had tried failsafe-x mode, but this appears to have disappeared!
    3) Start fsck (to exit read-only mode).
    4) To connect to the network, type in “dhclient eth0″ [enter] (without the quote marks).
    5) Type in “sudo apt-get install virtualbox-ose-guest-utils” [enter]
    6) Type in “sudo reboot” [enter], then select the first option.

  2. Gary Says:
    November 2nd, 2011 at 12:18 pm

    Excellent – thanks. Been trying to figure this out for the last week or so but couldn’t find anyone reporting the same problem.

    Worked like a charm.

  3. Justin R. Says:
    November 9th, 2011 at 1:43 pm

    Worked for me after upgrading and being hung at the purple ubuntu startup screen. Thanks for the solution!

  4. Robbie Says:
    November 9th, 2011 at 6:08 pm

    Legend, wow that fixed it. Thanks so much for publishing this fix!

    Good job.

  5. Wayne Says:
    November 10th, 2011 at 7:00 am

    Yeehah!
    Thanks Pete! I’ve searched for a solution since the Ubuntu 11.10 version was released and your way worked.

    Thanks again and all the best to you!

  6. RCD Says:
    November 19th, 2011 at 12:49 pm

    Thank you very much. This did the job.

  7. Rox Says:
    January 4th, 2012 at 9:23 am

    Thanks a ton dude.. Worked instantly.. Flawless!!

  8. maggie Says:
    March 7th, 2012 at 7:14 am

    Thanks! After trying out different solutions on the internet for days, this is the only one which worked. :)

  9. Sam Says:
    March 8th, 2012 at 6:41 pm

    Thanks so much. This totally solved the issue.

  10. Andreas Says:
    April 11th, 2012 at 9:09 pm

    THANKS to OP and Pete, awesome tip! In my case I had to run “dhclient eth1″ and then re-install the guest addition but other than that it was spot on!

  11. Jef Says:
    November 7th, 2012 at 8:37 pm

    Thank you very much for your tip ! It worked instantly. Thank you again !

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