I just bought an Acer Swift 3 (SF314-51-74FW) with an Intel HD 520, Intel Core i7-6500U processor, 14'' FHD LED LCD, and Windows 10 Home pre-installed. The default boot method is UEFI - Secure Boot.
I didn't find the SF serie laptop location for my post, so I put it in S and R series.
I created 120 GB free disk space by shrinking the Windows partition in Windows 10. I created a bootable USB stick using the Startup Disk Creator in Ubuntu with an ISO of Ubuntu 16.04 64-bit (the checksum is correct).
After having changed the boot order to have the USB stick first, I got the GRUB2 menu. After selecting 'Trying Ubuntu without installing', I got a blank/black screen. The 'working light' on the USB stick did not flash anymore, indicating that nothing was happening.
I tried the following proposed fixes, without success:
- Replacing 'quiet splash' with 'nomodeset' (assuming it was the graphic card)
- Using an external monitor (for the same reason, using both 'quiet splash' and 'nomodeset')
- Setting the boot method to 'Legacy' (no valid boot device was found)
- Disabling 'secure boot' in UEFI (still blank screen after grub)
- Adding the two files in BOOT/EFI (or was it EFI/BOOT..) to trusted boot methods and putting them on top of the boot order (still blank screen after grub)
In addition, I tried to run the live USB from another USB sticks. In all cases, after having selected an option from the menu, I got a black screen. Both the CPU and the graphic card are used in 'Ubuntu certified systems'.
My post voluntarily looks like the one of eelcoherder on this topic http://community.acer.com/t5/Linux/Ubuntu-on-E5-573G-71L9-black-screen-after-menu-on-Live-USB/td-p/405318
The solution was to change the version of the BIOS (the initial one not accepting Linux), but the swift 3 was just released so there is only one BIOS version available on the Acer website (the default one I already have).
Suggestions, pointers to similar questions that I may have missed and other help would be much appreciated. Are there any tests that I can carry out to find the probable cause of the black screen? Thanks.
