Ubuntu

Gutsy won't boot (black screen) after KDE 4.0 install and uninstall

Asked by maya9

Having a terrible time. Mayday!

Installed KDE 4 last night on top of Gutsy. When it came time to start things up, I got a half screen of snow, then a blue screen with an off center box saying "Welcome to Debian" and a log in. I tried logging in using every option (gnome, kde, kde 4.0) and it always took me to a flat blue screen with a terminal window.

So I restart in recovery mode to a command line, do sudo gdm, and get a ubuntu login screen with system options. I try the kde 4.0 and it runs, though VERY buggy. At this point I just want to get it OFF my system and get back to my lovely gutsy. Restart in similar manner and choose gnome and things are good (except I can't go online).

I then try various remove strategies,
sudo aptitude remove kubuntu-desktop
sudo apt-get remove kubuntu-desktop
going into synaptic and searching for kde files

Sorry, I don't know enough to know what I'm doing.
Anyway, restarting now takes me past the grub screen and then to a half screen of stripy zig-zag lines and then a BLANK BLACK screen and then nothing more. Just black. I have to hold the button down to get it to turn off.

I can still reboot in recovery mode as I did before and it appears that KDE is gone--it isn't showing up in the login screen's options. What happened? How do I get a normal start up into gutsy?

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marcobra (Marco Braida) (marcobra) said : 		#1

Please try to press CTRL+ALT+"+" and/or CTRL+ALT+"-" to dynamically change video frequency
or press CTRL+ALT+BKSPACE to restart graphics layer.

Reconfiguring your xserver-xorg may help you.

A) ---- If you can view graphics Gnome desktop

Please open a Terminal from the menu Applications->Accessories->Terminal
and jump to step C

B) ---- If you cannot view graphics Gnome desktop

Please press CTRL+ALT+F2 and make login with your user and password
and go on to step C

C) ----------------------------------------------------------------------

To make a backup copy of your actual /etc/X11/xorg.conf type:

cd /etc/X11
sudo cp xorg.conf xorg.conf.bak

give your user password when requested, you don't see nothing when you type it, then press enter.

Then try to reconfigure your xserver-xorg

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

answer to the simply questions, then restart the pc.

If something goes wrong you can restore the saved copy of your old configuration, open a terminal or login to a virtual terminal by pressing ctrl+alt+F2 and type:

cd /etc/X11
sudo cp xorg.conf.bak xorg.conf

and restart the pc, type:

sudo reboot

Hope this helps

Revision history for this message
maya9 (maya9) said : 		#2

Hello, Thank you for responding.

I found that pressing alt and ctrl (but not backspace or + or - ) revealed a frame of large text staring with :

Booting 'Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic

and ending with:

Loading, please wait...
Ubuntu 7.10 ubuntu laptop tty1

That seems to be where it was freezing, only before the screen was staying black so I couldn't see it. The harddrive isn't doing anything.

Once again, I can get to regular, working, graphic Ubuntu in recovery mode. This problem occurs when I just hit 'On' for a normal boot.

Help!

Thank you!

Revision history for this message
maya9 (maya9) said : 		#3

Hang on,
I just got this suggestion on the ubuntu forum:
______________
Removing kubuntu-desktop will not result in removing KDE 4 from your computer as kubuntu-desktop depends on the KDE 3 packages. To remove KDE 4 remove the KDE 4 ppa repository from /etc/apt/sources.list and run:
Code:

sudo aptitude remove kde4-core kdm-kde4
that should remove the KDE 4 core packages, to make sure you've got everything gone run:
Code:

aptitude search kde4

And make sure that none of the packages with 'kde4' in the name have an i in front of their names.

Then run:
Code:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm

To give you the menu in which you can choose your session manager
___________________

Okay, so I did that and the result is that indeed, I was able to boot into Ubuntu without recovery mode. Yeah!

However, the boot takes an incredibly long time now, includes a long period of black screen, and several moments of 3/4 snow/zig-zag lines, red dots at the top, and other screen madness.
Something is still not right, though I am thrilled that it is booting at all. Booting in used to be extremely quick and painless with no craziness on the screen.
Do you know how to improve whatever is going on now?

Thank you again!

Revision history for this message
maya9 (maya9) said : 		#4

It's also running really, really slowly.

Revision history for this message
maya9 (maya9) said : 		#5

bump

Just an update. Laptop is booting up into ubuntu. However the boot is taking 3 or 4 minutes, including a minute and a half of black screen, and then snow, zig-zag lines, etc. Finally it makes it to the log in screen and everything seems to working fine except it is really really slow. Like, a lag between hitting a letter and it showing up on the screen. Something is clearly not right, though booting at all is a huge improvement. Help! Thank you!

Revision history for this message
marcobra (Marco Braida) (marcobra) said : 		#6

Please edit the file /boot/grub/menu.lst and remove the splash and quiet parameter from the default kernel parameter, to indagate and view more starting messages.

Please open a Terminal from the menu Applications->Accessories->Terminal and type:

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

or (if you are using kde)

sudo kate /boot/grub/menu.lst

give your user password when requested, you don't see nothing when you type it, then press enter.

Search the row

# defoptions=........ your options quiet splash

and delete the "quiet splash" parameter

# defoptions=........ your options

save and exit

then type:

sudo update-grub

Reboot your pc, and watch more startup messages

Can you help with this problem?

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