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10.4 won't boot past the purple screen

Asked by mara

I'm running 10.4, and have been for 6+ months with no problems. No other OS'es on the computer.

All of a sudden yesterday, firefox crashed, and the whole machine restarted.

Now I can't get it to boot past the purple screen (the one with the dots that tick off). I've left it for upwards of 5 minutes to no avail. I've tried startx (no idea what it did, but it didn't help) which seems to be a common solution. None of the other posts seem to quite tackle this issue.

I don't get a command line (or the scrolling command line) between the Dell boot screen and the purple Ubuntu screen, so I don't think I can do the grub thing.

Any ideas?

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

Hold shift at boot and you can then select recovery mode and then root

You can now read logs and whatever else you wish to do

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mara (gammafish) said : 		#2

What kind of information am I looking for that would help me figure out what's wrong?

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#3

read logs in /var/log you may want to make a fresh user and troubleshoot there.

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Ubfan (ubfan1) said : 		#4

Try hitting esc at the dots, which should switch you to a text screen. The error message may be repeating here. Switch back with another esc.

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mara (gammafish) said : 		#5

ubfan - no error messages. everything listed is "ok".

parsnip - not quite advanced enough to create a new used from the command line :(

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#6

Well the GUI won't boot so it's necessary.

Can you help with this problem?

Provide an answer of your own, or ask mara for more information if necessary.

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