Tails Not Booting: Blue Background With No Welcome Screen, and Other Start Failures (2026)
Short answer: if Tails gets past the boot loader (the first menu, GRUB or SYSLINUX) and then stops on a plain background, a black screen or an error message instead of the Welcome Screen, the operating system has started but the graphical session has not. Tails’ own documentation attributes this kind of failure mainly to graphics cards, and documents a boot option to try for each affected family. You add that option in the boot loader, start again, and, if it works, you can save it on the USB stick.
Everything below was checked on 16 October 2026 against two pages of the official Tails documentation: Known issues with graphics cards and Modifying the boot options using the Boot Loader.
First, read what the screen says
- An error that starts with “Error starting GDM with your graphics card:” Tails tells you exactly what to look up. Note the name, the ID in square brackets (for example
[10de:0a6c]) and the revision number if there is one. The ID identifies the model of graphics card, not your computer. - “Probing EDD (edd=off to disable)…” Add the boot option
edd=off. - A plain background or a black screen, with no message. Start with the graphics card workarounds below. Tails documents a black screen on computers with switchable graphics (such as Nvidia Optimus), including several MacBook Pro models.
Tails’ documentation does not describe a “blue screen” as a separate failure. A background with no Welcome Screen on top is the same symptom as a black screen: the desktop never received a working display.
The documented workarounds, by graphics card
These are the boot options Tails lists. Try one at a time, one per start attempt.
| Graphics card | Boot option documented by Tails |
|---|---|
| AMD Radeon HD family | modprobe.blacklist=amdgpu modprobe.blacklist=radeon (only if the computer also has an integrated graphics card) |
AMD Radeon R9 290/390 (Hawaii PRO, [1002:67b1]) | radeon.dpm=0 |
| AMD Radeon RX 480 and possibly other RX 400 cards | amdgpu.dc=0 |
| AMD Radeon RX Vega (including in some Ryzen processors) | iommu=soft |
| Various Intel graphics (Iris Xe, UHD JasperLake, Ice Lake…) | i915.force_probe=XXXX, replacing XXXX with the 4 characters after 8086: in the error |
| Intel UHD Graphics 620 (for example Dell Latitude 7490) | i915.enable_psr=0 |
| Intel HD Graphics, Bay Trail (for example Acer Aspire E13) | plymouth.enable=0 disablehooks=plymouth |
| Two graphics cards (integrated plus Nvidia or AMD) | modprobe.blacklist=nouveau, or on another attempt nouveau.modeset=0 |
For computers with two graphics cards, Tails also suggests plugging the monitor into the motherboard’s Intel output rather than the external card, and choosing one graphics adapter explicitly in the BIOS instead of letting the computer decide, then trying the other one if the first does not help.
A GeForce GTX graphics card up close: when a computer has a card like this next to an integrated Intel chip, Tails can fail to pick one and never show its Welcome Screen.
How to add a boot option
Tails starts with either GRUB or SYSLINUX, depending on the computer. In both, the keyboard layout of the boot menu is English (US), which matters if you type on another layout: = and . may not be where you expect.
In SYSLINUX:
- Press Tab when the menu appears. A command line with the current boot options appears at the bottom.
- Press Space, then type the option. Separate several options with a space.
- Press Enter to start Tails.
In GRUB:
- Press e when the menu appears.
- Move with the arrow keys to the end of the line that starts with
linux(it is one line even if it wraps on screen). - Type a space and the option.
- Press Ctrl+X, F10 or Fn+F10 to start Tails.
If an option works, Tails documents how to save it on the USB stick so it is used automatically at each start. Those saved changes are deleted each time you upgrade Tails, so note the option somewhere.
If nothing works
Tails asks you to contact its support team by email and to include three things: the version of Tails you are starting, the name, ID and revision number of your graphics card, and, if possible, a photo of the error message. If a later Tails version fixes the problem, they ask you to say so, so that the known issues page can be updated.
Two other causes are worth ruling out before writing: a USB stick that was not written correctly (see our Tails USB installation guide, which includes checking the image’s signature) and a stick that started failing right after an upgrade, a case Tails’ documentation covers separately.
FAQ
Q: Tails shows a blue background after the boot menu and nothing else. Is my USB stick broken? Not necessarily. If the boot menu appeared, the stick was read. A background with no Welcome Screen means the graphical session did not start, which Tails attributes mainly to graphics card support. Try the boot options above before rewriting the stick.
Q: Which boot option should I try first?
The one that matches your graphics card. If Tails shows an error with a card ID, use that ID to find the row in the table. If there is no message, and the computer has two graphics cards, start with the BIOS setting and the nouveau options.
Q: Do I need to type the option every time? No. You can save it on the USB stick, as Tails documents, but the saved options are removed at each Tails upgrade.
Q: Can I use Tails in a virtual machine instead?
Tails documents specific graphics issues in virtual machines too (virt-manager, libvirt, QEMU and VMware), and recommends installing open-vm-tools-desktop as additional software in VMware. For anonymity, a physical start from USB is what Tails is designed for. See Tails OS explained and Qubes vs Tails vs Whonix.