My Ubuntu 10.04 beta turns into black screen when I start it up. I see the Purple Ubuntu loading for less than a second, then it turns into blank black screen and nothing happens after, cannot use it or login.
I restarted it twice for updates, and it worked. I hibernated it (didn't work) so I forced to shutdown. It didn't boot since.
My video card is nVidia GeForce GT 130M.
Try booting up regularly and when it goes blank wait until you're sure that it's at the login screen.
Then hit Ctrl+Alt+F1 (in that order... well make sure you hit Ctrl+Alt before F1) to get into the command line mode. From there you can log in with your username and password to run apt-get upgrade, update, etc., and to remove your video card driver or replace it, etc.
Ctrl+Alt+F7 is the key combo to get back into the graphical mode.
Just be sure that if you do start up the PC that you don't just hard shut it down. Doing so can introduce errors into your OS that won't be very fun to diagnose or fix!
Ubuntu 10.04 is still Beta ... if you want to use Ubuntu for everyday use and not just testing download Ubuntu 9.10 .
I just booted up with an external monitor attached to my HP elitebook 8440p with this problem and the desktop came up on the monitor. I enabled the proprietary nvidia drivers and rebooted to a functioning laptop panel.
Did the problem start when you allowed Ubuntu to install your nVidia driver?
If so, here's what worked for me: Download the driver from the nVidia site directly and try installing that.
When I installed the driver provided by Ubuntu my machine kept booting to a blank, black screen; but when I downloaded and installed the driver from their site myself, it worked great.
Be sure to read the directions carefully. The basic process goes like this:
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop (I'm no expert, there may be a better way -- you could probably just log out and press Ctrl-Alt-F2)chmod 755 the installer
Boot as single user. Then apt-get update ; apt-get upgrade. Then install the nVidia driver, or the nouveau driver, or whatever.
For help on single user see: http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/grub-boot-into-single-user-mode/-
Basically: in grub, add the linux boot parameter 'single', then give the root password. If you don't have a root password set up you can boot with init=/bin/sh.