Ubuntu

screen freezes after log-in

Asked by rizwan

i used to have windows xp pro on the computer until a hard disk failure which i replaced with a new hard disk instead of going back to window xp pro i decided to try out the linux ubuntu as i had heard that it's as good as windows vista and even better there's no other operating system on my computer.i'm very new to this software. I have Dell optiples Gx260n computer and downloaded Ubunto 8.10 (interpid ibex) PC (intelx86)Desktop CD .i installed the cd and everything smoothly until when i type in my name and password the screen freezes and its happen twice i had to switch of the power supply.It freezes for ages. any help?

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jetbundle
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jetbundle (mbrane) said : 		#1

Does it happen all the time or only sometimes?
And can you describe at what stage of the login it freezes?
Can you go to another shell (crtl+alt+F1...F8), log in there and run top, and see whether there's any malicious process (i.e. that soaks up all your CPU all the time)?

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rizwan (rizwan-sahgal) said : 		#2

thanks for your reply
the thing is that when i type my name and password and press enter,the screen goes all blank and then there's no image.sorry i said freeze i meant went blank
i installed the program yesterday and ever since it hasn't taken me to my desktop.
i also called two friend and one said that i need a system set-up and the other said that it needs a graphic card.but i had windows xp pro for ages. and i never had a problem.me and friends don't know a lot about computrs,on this forum, i also have checked that people like you know loads about computers.i have lcd widescreen monitor but it misses the first letter of the word on each sentence .i have pressed ctrl+alt+F1 and this is what is said:

boot from(hao ,4)ext3 foabba74-05ez-4 c2-a29a-97aab55044e8
Starting up...
loading please wait...
.9+0 record in
.9+0 record out
xinit:name-to-dev-t(/dev/disk/by-uuid/g
eed5bd5-508b-4ad4-888d-afbo6014d810)=dev(8,6)
xinit:trying to resume from.dev/dosk/bi-uuid.9eed5bd5-508b-4d4-888d-afbo6714d510
xinit:no resume image,doing normal boot....
ubuntu 8.10 rizwan-desktop tty1

kind regards,
rizwan.

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Best jetbundle (mbrane) said : 		#3

So it seems to me, that in principle your graphics is fine, because the graphical login is already running on xorg (the graphical user interface). What it seems more like is that Gnome or KDE (the program to give you the desktop environment after login) are giving your trouble. If you were able to use the live CD to install Ubuntu, it mens that in principle ubuntu is able to run on your computer.

There are a few fixes the you can try.
First you can try whether the failsafe login works. In you login window, there's somewhere a button "sessions" or "menu". Try to look for the option "failsafe". That's basically an extremely minimalistic (but fully functional) desktop, that usually runs if everything else is screwed. You can use that to fix things, open a browser or so.

The second thing is that after your press crtl-alt-f1 (or any of f2 ... f6), there should be a like "login: " (it may be cut off b/c of your monitor). There you enter your user name, then "enter" and then your passwd, then "enter" (if it's cut off, then you can do it blindly). That brings you into a command-line shell. If you run the command "top", there is a list of processes, indicating the amount of memory and cpu and other resources they use. After you got your black screen on your graphical login, you can do that to check whether there'e something going bad (i.e. soaking all your cpu all the time - there shouldn't be anything using more than 10% cpu or so). In "top", pressing "q" exits top, and pressing "k" and then entering the PID (the number on the left) allows you to kill a process.
I think crtl-alt-f7 is the shell or your graphical login. The command "Exit" exits you, and the command "startx" (or start kde or startgdm/startgnome) starts the graphical interface and desktop environment.

Now, to fix things, it's really ard to tell what exactly is broken. If there is no sign what exactly is broken, first try to update:
Either in the failsafe shell or in the command-line shell, run the following commands (I assume you're connected to the internet):
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
Then re-start and try again to log in. If it still doesn't work, try to re-install gnome:
sudo apt-get install --reinstall gnome
If that still doesn't work, try to install KDE instead of gnome. I personally think KDE is cooler anyway, but I guess for that comment some people would nail me on a cross or so. Anyway, the command for that is
sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop
That will take a while cos its a big installation. Next time you log in, you can choose as your session (in the session menu of your login) "KDE" instead of "gnome". There's a good chance that that will work.

If you get stuck at any step, then let me know.

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rizwan (rizwan-sahgal) said : 		#4

Thanks jetbundle, that solved my question.

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rizwan (rizwan-sahgal) said : 		#5

HI,jetbundle,
the other methods didn't work.
then i uninstalled gnome and installed KDE.
the KDE installaion did the trick.
it works perfectly
thanks
kind regards
rizwan