Fixing Flashing No-Boot for Ubuntu 12.04

So, I installed a clean Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit OS onto a new Dell XPS i7 that previously had Windows 8 UEFI, and had disastrous results. After hours of work, I was finally able to get it working (yay!) Here's what I had to do...


First, make sure you get into the BIOS and turn of the Secure Boot.


Once this was done, I was able to boot the Ubuntu LiveCD (USB?) from by handy USB flash drive, and easily install the OS. This was where the fun really started. Upon reboot, the system would occasionally boot to the login screen, flickering violently, with the screen split in half. Logging in only left me with the blank background (no icons, nothing except a mouse) that kept flashing. This seizure-fest was only for special occasions, however, as most of the time it would boot and sit at a blank screen.

Once I was able to get the GRUB boot menu to come up (thanks to boot-repair), I was able to log into the rescue mode. Starting in low-graphics mode led to more issues, and it hung with

ath: phy0: TX while HW is in FULL_SLEEP mode

Well, it looked like this could be caused by the wireless, which had been giving me a headache during install. (Seriously, the 2nd desktop with WIFI I've had trouble with lately - what's the deal?) So, I got into command line mode and:

ifconfig
nmcli nm wifi off
ifconfig

did the trick (the ifconfig's are just to check that it worked.) Reboot, try again, back to (most likely) the real problem - the graphics driver. This time the errors included:

swapon failed: Device or resource busy

and

initctl: Event failed

I checked my graphics card

lspci -v  | less

and jockey-text did the rest. (Source)


Use

jockey-text --list

to get a list of available drivers and their status, then use

# the init lines are required only for graphics drivers
sudo init 1
jockey-text --enable=DRIVER
sudo init 2

where DRIVER is the one you got from the list. For example, to install the Broadcom B43 wireless driver:

jockey-text --enable=firmware:b43



Once I switched over to the best video driver for my graphics card, I was a reboot away from a happy system (finally!)