Okay, so I had a dual boot of Tango Studio (based on Ubuntu 10.04) and Windows XP.
Yesterday I downloaded the .iso for Ubuntu 11.10 and attempted to install from a USB (my BIOS won't normally boot from USB but I had PLOP boot manager on a CD). I booted up Ubuntu from the USB and then from there formatted the partition with Tango on and installed Ubuntu 11.10. On booting up I came into Grub rescue mode. So I booted up from the USB again and used boot-repair to reinstall Grub.
After this I would see the normal Grub menu, but on choosing Ubuntu I would come to a black screen. On choosing recovery mode it would begin starting normally with no obvious errors but instead of coming to a cli I would just get a blank screen with a flashing cursor on the top left, not accepting any input.
I have since reformatted and reinstalled from a CD rather than USB and had the exact same problem. I used boot-repair again and the result is the same. Output of the most recent boot-repair is at http://paste.ubuntu.com/869805/
I have also tried editing the ubuntu grub entry and replacing quiet with text nomodeset as I saw in an answer to another question. This got me a bit further - I saw the purple ubuntu loading screen but still came to a blank screen after that. Anyway, in most of the other questions in which that is brought up the user is still able to boot into recovery, while I am not.
Can anyone help? Thanks in advance, let me know if there's any more info I need to provide!
EDIT FOR MORE INFO:
I read something saying it's quiet splash that should be replaced with nomodeset. Earlier I had left splash in the line. So i tried it this way and it froze after displaying the following text:
fsck from util-linux 2.19.1
mountall: Plymouth command failed
mountall: Disconnected from Plymouth
/dev/sda5:clean, 139359/1741488 files, 745830/6961125 blocks
From a bit of googling it doesn't look like plymouth is essential, but I've checked and I do have the most current versions of mountall and plymouth installed so I don't know why there's a problem
EDIT FOR MORE INFO AGAIN:
I used dkpg --reconfigure plymouth cause I saw it mentioned in another forum and it still says plymouth command failed on boot
FOLLOW UP - JULY
Unfortunately I was not able to get this working. I needed it working and switched distribution before anyone commented or answered this question, so am unable to try out any suggestions posted here
I'm thinking of giving this another go sometime soon, if I do then I'll report back.
I had same problem with my Acer-Aspire.
What I did, If you have already installed the Ubuntu and you can see the link in grub, you do one thing. This is not the absolute answer but at least you can see your screen.
Choose your Ubuntu option and click:
to edit grub. Now go to one line before the end where you can see the words quiet splash; after you put one space and type this:
and then
or
to save this grub temporary for this time. Now it will boot and after a while when you saw the black screen, you hold
Left/Right arrows means that [Left or Right]. One of them, I prefer Left.
Your screen should be back. OK, you login through your username.
And now, if you would like to make it permanently workable but with one more step (Fn+Left/Right Arrows) you have to edit the grub and update it.
OK, If you like lets do that. Open terminal or hold on (Ctrl+Alt+T) and write this code:
put your root password.
One page will be opened. You go to line 11 [this no is with counting one empty line], where you can see this command:
Exactly after the word splash, you add same thing which you add in the grub at past. Add one space and this command:
and save it. Now your line must be like this:
OK, go back to terminal and see the file is closed.
Now one thing is remain; you run this code in terminal to update the grub:
put your root password and you are done. Just every time that you want to come you have to Hold [Fn+Left/Right] to see your screen.
I hope this is helpful for you.
When the error appears and ask you to choose between recovery mode or others, pick others and press E. Then F10 and press any key, then press F10 again till it works.