Trouble installing ubuntu 14.04

[Essence_of_War]

I'm having trouble installing ubuntu 14.04 on the system in my sig. I have a stable 12.04 I've been using for a while. Intial symptoms were that when I tried boot from a live 14.04 DVD (known to be good, I've used it to both try and install on another computer) was that it got to the ubuntu splash, then threw up a blank screen before it got to the choice between Try Ubuntu and Install Ubuntu.

So I tried:
1) Burning a new installer DVD, I was able to boot and Try Ubuntu from that on another system, but got the same results on my sig system.
2) Removed "quiet splash" from the boot options. With this disabled it works through a ton of verbose boot stuff until it gets to:

Sending an event to indicate plymouth is up [OK]

and then everything goes black and doesn't recover.

I'm not sure where to go from here, anyone have any suggestions?

Edited to add/clarify:
1) I have secure boot disabled
2) My boot drive has an ubuntu 12.04 and a win7 partition, that are dual-booting happily with grub2.

 

[Jodell88]

UEFI issue perhaps?

Edit: should have read the entire post. oops

Seeing that it tries to start plymouth and most likely fails, it seems that it may be a problem with the graphic driver.

Does it boot the live disk or does it only fail after installation?

 

[Essence_of_War]

It makes it to the kb+human then to the Ubuntu splash, but it just goes to black at that point. I haven't actually been able to install yet, this is all attempting to try Ubuntu from a live DVD.
in case it matters, I double checked my sata ports and I'm def using only Intel sata ports, no marvel/asmedia whatever.

 

[lxskllr]

Try picking nomodeset from the F6 menu on boot.

 

[Essence_of_War]

Hooray! Typing this from Ubuntu 14.04 trial! Thanks lxskllr!

If I understand correctly then it sounds liek I should set "nomodeset" as a grub cmdline boot option permanently if I'd like to install 14.04, correct?

So what is nomodeset doing, exactly? A quick read says that it tells the kernel not to load any video drivers until X is loaded, and rather, to use bios presets, because, presumably, there is some incompatibility between my gpu and some kernel video settings or something?

 

[lxskllr]

I don't know tbh. It's just something I've seen mentioned before. I don't think using that affects operation, but you may have some gfx glitchiness as the computer boots; not a big deal. Maybe updating the kernel after install will remove the need for using it.

 

[SOFTengCOMPelec]

So what is nomodeset doing, exactly?

This explains it:

nomodeset

The newest kernels have moved the video mode setting into the kernel. So all the programming of the hardware specific clock rates and registers on the video card happen in the kernel rather than in the X driver when the X server starts.. This makes it possible to have high resolution nice looking splash (boot) screens and flicker free transitions from boot splash to login screen. Unfortunately, on some cards this doesnt work properly and you end up with a black screen. Adding the nomodeset parameter instructs the kernel to not load video drivers and use BIOS modes instead until X is loaded.

Source

 

[Essence_of_War]

I had to use nomodeset the first time I booted after the installation, but after I did a slew of kernel updates, I didn't need it the next time.

Everything worked out really well, thanks folks!