AMD64 version gives me "black screen of death"

[nickv]

Hello all
First of all I want to say that I'm very new to linux so please forgive any stupid questions.

I installed BackBox 3.05 32-bit and it works like a charm however that was my second choice after the amd64 version kept giving me the black screen of death - before it gave me any text & before the grub/bootloader. The computer with the issue is my dell inspiron1501 - I have upgraded the hard disk and RAM but don't think that makes a difference. What really puzzles me is that my laptop is built with a amd64 bit processor

Thanks for your help
Nick

[ZEROF]

Hi,

If you are not advanced user i don't propose you to try use of something that will take you day or days to fix all issues. I know that you can learn a lot from your problem (if you find solution) but if your pc is running ok with 32bit version, just stay with.

[nickv]

I thought it would be an easy solution. Thank you for the advice.

[BobDole]

Ok this is what i think is the issue, It may be! it may very well not!

However I Googled your machine Inspiron 1501 and  the tech specs of it returned with a AMD Turion processor, (im not sure if this is your processor)

However I then googled AMD Turion processor and the thing that showed up the most was the question ( is it a i686 set or x86_x64 Processor).

Now I'm not exactly sure but i think this the issue

The Turion by default is naturally, a 32-bit processor (which explains why BBox works on 32 bit mode) however the Turion does support the i686 instruction set hence it does have (theoretically) 64 bit support, however whether it supports the x86_x64 systems is where im not to sure. (I goggled "what is the difference between i686 and x86_x64 and the results confused the f*** out of me)  

however I bet if you installed and i686 linux  image(preferably Ubuntu based distro if you want to use backbox) and then addded the repos from http://www.backbox.org/repository I'd bet your OS would load, it may not work once your in backbox, however i bet if you got, let's say an Xubunutu 13.04 i686 image it would load past BIOS