[ubuntu] Ubuntu 13.10 Black Screen when additional HDD installed

My upgrade from 12.04 to 13.10 has been a painful journey. After auto-update from 13.04 to 13.10 I was not able to reboot - getting a 'black screen'. No live CDs would boot - I kept dropping into BusyBox with a initramfs prompt.

I finally was able to install 13.10 by installing from LAN, removing all HDDs except the system disk. All working fine, and reboot no problem.

Now I've added an additional HDD I am getting a 'black screen with flashing prompt' immediately after BIOS. The additional HDD is not new, but has been reformatted (a single primary partition) using GParted as EXT4 with no flags showing.

If I remove the second HDD all boots okay.

Ubuntu 13.10 32bit is a standard Desktop install + GParted + TeamViewer + Chrome + LastPass + Everpad.

I'm assuming my black screen is not video related (boots okay on one HDD). Thought maybe the second HDD may have a MBR but GParted doesn't show a boot flag. The newer HDD works fine on this system if I do a hot install (connect while Ubuntu is running), but will not allow reboot.


Packard Bell ixtreme M5741
i3 processor
Bought in 2010
No additional hardware.
BIOS Information: American Megatrends Inc. | Version: P01-B1 | Release Date: 03/23/2010. BIOS set to DEFAULT.