ThinkPad Edge E525 screen black on suspend/restart and sometimes on start-up

Linux Support
1

I have read the original post on this topic, when “E525 black screen” is searched for or something similar. I refer to this post below.

Before I alter the line in GRUB mode the line reads: “…quiet splash $vt_handoff”

I have entered the GRUB mode and added “nomodeset” after “quiet splash”, I press ctrl+X to boot and
Ubuntu loads however, the resolution is poor and the dimensions of the display are generally displeasing.

When I restart from this situation I get a black screen with vertical line pattern.

The frustrating thing is I can turn the computer off by holding down the power button and turn it back on and it will
load just fine pretty much every other time.

2

I take it you mean this topic:
http://linuxforums.org.uk/index.php?topic=10231.0

Is it the same issue … ie. is it a backlight issue ?

3

Thanks for replying.

I’m not sure what a back light issue is exactly, but I took the torch on my phone (reasonably powerful) and shone it close to the screen, this did not illuminate anything, I just saw black.

4
The frustrating thing is I can turn the computer off by holding down the power button and turn it back on and it will load just fine pretty much every other time.

Is this a recent occurrence on a otherwise stable system or it is following an upgrade or after a new install?

I'm not sure what a back light issue is exactly, but I took the torch on my phone (reasonably powerful) and shone it close to the screen, this did not illuminate anything, I just saw black.

Not sure if the phone torch is powerful enough.
On mine I had to use a desk lamp in dark room to see the image on the screen.

5

I received my laptop with windows 7, but because I use ubuntu 12.04 in the office I installed 12.04 from the ubuntu website using the windows installer:
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/windows-installers

I had the problem straight away, but not with windows, only when I booted with ubuntu.

I hoped this problem would go away after doing a complete install of 12.04 but it hasn’t.

When I have this problem the screen is glowing but blank/black.

6

OK, if the screen lights are on it’s not a backlight issue … can you tell us the laptop make and model so we can look for known issues.

Can you also try to describe the problem a little better … what was the issue BEFORE you altered the GRUB boot line ?

and can you open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and post the output from these 2 commands:

sudo lshw -C display

and

sudo lspci -vnn | grep -A7 -i "display"
7

My laptop is a Lenovo Thinkpad Edge E525. It’s a 64 bit machine so I installed Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit.

The first command gives:

wynne@wynne-ThinkPad-E525:~$ sudo lshw -C display
*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI
vendor: Hynix Semiconductor (Hyundai Electronics)
physical id: 1
bus info: pci@0000:00:01.0
version: 00
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
configuration: driver=radeon latency=0
resources: irq:47 memory:e0000000-efffffff ioport:4000(size=256) memory:f0b00000-f0b3ffff

The second gives nothing.

My problem is simply that when I power up my laptop around 50% of the time, the Thinkpad logo will appear as the system powers up, then it goes away, but the Ubuntu login screen never appears, the screen just stays black. The other 50% of the time, the Thinkpad logo will appear as the system powers up, and the Ubuntu login screen does appear and it works just fine.

I recently followed some instructions from another post you replied to, I altered the GRUB boot line in the manner I mentioned earlier, but the problem hasn’t changed since I did this. As you say the changes only remain for one boot. Though a few times after I did this my laptop would go straight into the GRUB menu on power up, again randomly, but this has not happened for a number of power ups now. When this did happen I would just choose the top option and it would work fine.

Thank you for your help, I hope I am giving you some something to go on.

8

Are any other graphics drivers being offered to you by “Additional Drivers” ?

if you can’t find “Additional Drivers” in the menus, open a terminal and run:

jockey-gtk

What s listed there ?

According to this page:

suspend and hibernate may work with the proprietary ATI drivers

9

Here is an appropriate screenshot

10

Close that, then find “Additional Drivers” through your menu’s/Dash, and start it … then select one of those drivers and hit the “Activate” button.

The reason I say find it through the menu, rather than running it from the command line is I don’t know if there will be a permission issue running it from the command line.

11

I’ve done that, no problems on the restart, ubuntu loading logo was lower resolution. i.e. bigger and fuzzier, but login screen then looks just the same as before.

12

… to clarify, it looks good.

13

Great … please let us know how it goes after a day or two … and if suspend now works :slight_smile:

It is possible to raise the resolution of the Ubuntu logo (with dots) if you wish, but it’s not necessary.

14

I’ve turned my computer on and off several times over the last couple of days and my laptop is behaving as I’d like it to. It also comes out of suspend fine.
Thank you very much for your help.
Wynne.

15

Thanks for the feedback wynne … that my help someone else in the future … cheers :wink: