Black Screen

Troubleshooting guide:

My computer boots to a Black screen

Please keep in mind that this page is just an experiment to collect the working solutions to common problems from hundreds of forum posts to a wiki-like troubleshooting page. It needs to be checked by experienced users.

Has something crashed when you turned off your PC?

Have you recently updated?

Blumen wrote on Reddit: If you can see your cursor, but there is no wallpaper and panel, this means the process plasmashell crashed. Try running:

   plasmashell --replace ; kwin_x11 --replace  

tinny123 wrote:

Do you have offline updates turned off?

Then it's possible you didn't let discover finish installing updates so you have now broken packages. When you get to the black screen hit ctrl+alt+f1 and log in into terminal with your username and password. It would be good if you can connect your pc to the internet.

In terminal run these commands:

   sudo apt update  

   sudo apt dist-upgrade  

   sudo apt install -f   

Do you have python modules installed?

You can try fixing update errors with already existing python modules: remove the old version from the system installation with

   sudo pip uninstall python-<the module to uninstall>

Have you installed kernel updates lately?

You can try booting with a different kernel from the GRUB menu (Advanced options for GNU/Linux).

If you can't see your mouse:

You can try hitting ctrl+alt+f2 to a terminal then running:

   startx

It's possible that your home directory is so full it stops the GUI from loading. You can try botting from a live-USB and cleaning up some space. If you can't boot from a live-USB it's likely you have a hardware problem with your PC.