Recover crashed 10.04

Hit the escape key when you see the grub menu, then choose the "recovery" option.

Please give us more info about your Ubuntu boot process where it stop ?

Which messages or errors you see ?

Can you get terminal access by pressing ctrl+alt+f2 ?

Thank you

Please also try to press the shift key at computer boot and please choose to start your system from a previous kernel release number... if you have any installed...

Hth

Hi :)

If you give us the output of

sudo fdisk -l

then we might be able to help you re-install grub2 if that seems likely to help?
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

HI again

Lol, it happens, there are a variety of different ways to recover from something like this and it even gives you an opportunity to create a separate /home partition to keep all your data&settings safer if things have gone really wrong. Hopefully it's something fairly easy to fix instead tho :)

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Hi,

I get a menu that asks me to choose how the screen settings are to start. This goes nowhere and I cancel it and get a screen login terminal.

I login and get a local terminal, but this is where I am stumped as to what to do next.

Regards,

Allan (:

Hi,

I get a menu that says that it will start in low graphics mode. On
clicking on this it does nothing. After clicking OK it goes to a screen
terminal login. After logging in there is the regular command line
screen where I do know what to input. Help

Regards,

Allan (:

Hi,

After the message that it is in low graphics mode and clicking OK. I get
a screen login. After logging in I get a command terminal screen which
is where I get stuck as I do not know what command to use to reboot the
computer.

Regards,

Allan (:

Hi,

The sudo fdisk -l command gives all the info regarding the hard disk and
boot.

On trying to restart the machine as normal there is a message that
states that it is in low graphics mode I click on OK and it goes to
screen login. After logging in I get a command terminal which is where I
get stuck.

Regards,

Allan (:

Hi :)

Ok, so it sounds as tho you have only stuffed-up the X-server so it's only graphics that is affected, hopefully. In "recovery mode" instead of choosing "failsafe" or low graphics try the "fix x-server" option. That should get graphics but to defaults and allow you to boot in normally. If you ever gget to a command-line and want to reboot try

reboot

if that doesn't work try

sudo reboot

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Hi,

I tried the fix x-server option and get to a command line screen where I login as normal. I then tried the sudo reboot and it reboots but goes no further.

I appears to be definitely a problem with the screen setup but I am no nearer to getting the system up and running again.

There is an answer and that is to reinstall all over again. I have all my important files backed up but am not looking forward to starting all over again.

When I use the 10.04 startup CD I get only 2 options. That is try it out or reinstall. I do not see a recover mode. Am I missing something. I would really like to fix this without a complete reinstall as it will be good for my Ubuntu learning curve. Thanks to all the help out there. It is very much appreciated.

Regards,

Allan

Hi :)

Since you have already started talking about the reinstall option please let me recommend first moving your /home folder onto it's own partition using rsync as described in
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Partitioning/Home/Moving
this will then make reinstalls or multi-boots sharing the /home data partition very much easier and safer to handle since you can get the Partitioning Section of the installer to NOT format the /home. Formatting loses data.

Also it is possible to do do a re-fresh install rather than a full install. When you get to the Partitioning Section choose "Advanced" or "Manual" install and then make sure that there are NO ticks in the "Format?" column.

If you want to continue trouble-shooting to get the most elegant answer then please give us the output of

uname -a

and then try this to see if you get any useful error messages

startx

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Hi,

I have reinstalled the system after several serious attempts to salvage what I had. However, it was all backed up and the plus side is it seems to work better after a reinstall. I am very impatient and I paid the price as I crashed the OS.

Many thanks to all that attempted to help me. I am sure that at some point in time in the future I will get my head round Linux and be able to fix it on my own.

At least I did make it clear from the beginning that Ubuntu crashed because of me and not the software.

Regards,

Allan :)

Hi :)

The important thing is not really about who to blame but how to solve. If an answer results in overall improved performance then it is a very good win :)) Reinstall is a very legit answer but it's good to poke around a bit first so this has been all good by the sound of it.

Congrats and regards from
Tom :)