Gfilui

TL:DR; I tried installing Ubuntu twice. Both times, after restarting the computer and booting into Ubuntu, all I got to was a blank, black screen.

I recently built my first gaming computer. I installed Windows 10 on it because I knew that in order for a dual-boot solution to work, it would be easier to install that first so I was not fighting with Windows.

When I got to where I was installing Ubuntu, I downloaded the ISO file for 18.04 and created a bootable USB with Rufus. I turned off quick boot for Windows and then restarted my computer. I still had to load into the boot menu to load the USB media.

The first time, when I got to partitioning the drive I was installing Ubuntu on (the same SSD that had Windows installed), I had already allocated 100GB for Ubuntu in Windows disk management system (as exFAT). Found out afterwards that I should have left it unallocated, but this is my first rodeo so I didn't know any better at the time. I manually partitioned the space I had created: 20GB for root (/), 8GB for swap (yes, I also found out I didn't need this), and the rest of the space for everything else (/home). When I tried accepting this, it gave me an error stating that I had not allowed space for an EFI partition. Now, Windows already has one, but I went ahead and redid the space for Ubuntu to allow for another EFI partition. After the installation, I restarted the system, and then blank, black screen. No words, nothing. Just blank.

Note: I did say to download and install updates as well as install third-party media.

So, second time. I completely shut down my computer, booted into Windows, formatted the space on my hard drive to remove the Ubuntu install (basically deleted the volume of 100GB), and left it unallocated. This time around, I followed this tutorial for some assistance. Though I left it to where I would still have 100GB for Ubuntu.

Same story, get to partitioning the drives and decide to do it manually, but I didn't do so many dumb partitions this time.

Note: I had done some extensive research on dual-boot solutions after my first failure to figure out the best way to do this. The majority of them still suggested manually partitioning the space.

The only partitions I did was allocate 20GB for root (/) and the rest of the free space for Linux media (/home). It did not give me an EFI error this time, so I figured that it actually recognized the already existent one this time around. It installed, seemingly successfully, and I restarted my computer, and....blank, black screen.

Note: I guess I should mention at this point that both times I installed Ubuntu, when I restarted, it did not bring up a screen to choose Ubuntu. It automatically booted into Windows, and I had to restart my computer and go into the boot menu to choose Ubuntu.

Any guidance or suggestions on how I should proceed? Let me know if I need to provide more information. Thank you.

EDIT: I have noticed that this question sounds like they are having a similar issue.

To solve this issue, I first solved the GRUB problem by booting into Windows, running a command prompt as administrator, and running the following line:

bcdedit /set bootmgr path EFIubuntushimx64.efi

Note: You may have to put double-quotes around bootmgr to get the line to execute successfully.

I have read that in order to avoid turning off Secure Boot, you have to use shimx64.efi instead of just grubx64.efi because shim will have Ubuntu's Secure Boot certificate.

When I restarted and got to the Grub menu, I hovered over Ubuntu and edited the boot sequence by changing quiet splash to nomodeset. Then Ubuntu booted in fine. I then had to go download the driver for my graphics card (Nvidia) by opening a terminal and following steps 1, 3, and 4 of this tutorial. After rebooting again, the driver took effect and everything worked perfectly.

I know when I installed on same drive, Grub always showed up asking how I want to boot. Now on my laptop which has 2 drives (SSD-windows & HDD partial space dedicated to Ubuntu) I have to hit F9 on boot up to change the boot, or it will just load into Windows. Not really sure, but sounds like grub isn't taking priority.