Lucid Lynx boots as terminal screen after restart

What if you run:

startx

?

Typing "startx" at the command prompt produces 4 or 5 messages that say various things have been checked (it says all are OK)...but nothing else happens. Pressing CTL-ALT-F7 to attempt to bring up the GUI produces almost a full page of text in the Terminal stating a lot of technical things I don't understand...including the phrase, "fatal server error"...which doesn't sound good, even to me. If I turn off the machine manually, I can reboot it normally and everything is fine.

> To: <email address hidden>
> From: <email address hidden>
> Subject: Re: [Question #184879]: Lucid Lynx boots as terminal screen after restart
> Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:11:04 +0000
>
> Your question #184879 on Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/184879
>
> Status: Open => Needs information
>
> actionparsnip requested more information:
> What if you run:
>
> startx
>
> ?
>
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> To answer this request for more information, you can either reply to
> this email or enter your reply at the following page:
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> You received this question notification because you asked the question.

I need to correct some of the info I gave in my answer...I got things backwards: it's when i run 'startx' that i get a terminal page full of tech talk and error messages. in addition to "fatal server error", this is some of the other bad-sounding things it displayed:

(EE) [drm] failed to open
(EE) VESA (0) No valid modes
(EE) screens found, none have a usable configuration

fatal server error: no screens found

xinit: no such file or directory (errno 2)
Unable to connect to X_____ (couldn't read my own writing at this point)

Pressing CTL-ALT-F7 either brings up the 4 or 5 messages as described above, or sometimes nothing but a black screen with blinking cursor.

My apologies for the confusion.

What video chip do you use?

The mainboard is an Intel D865GLC; I discovered thru trial and research that Natty and Oneiric wouldn't support the onboard video. With Lucid, the video would at least work, but not too well...so I added a Nvidia GeForce 6 video card i found, and once the Nvidia drivers were installed, GUI seemed to work very nicely....until I discovered this problem.

I hope my next statement doesn't complicate things, but just in case this additional info is helpful: Since my last post, I've experienced this: In a terminal, I tried the command; X -configure just to see if anything good might happen on the screen. Terminal stated only root can run this and it asked me for a password...the password I created during install is evidently not the right one b/c it wouldn't work. It appears that either I have no root access in CLI or I'm not pressing the right keys at the right times.

> To: <email address hidden>
> From: <email address hidden>
> Subject: Re: [Question #184879]: Lucid Lynx boots as terminal screen after restart
> Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:11:00 +0000
>
> Your question #184879 on xorg in Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg/+question/184879
>
> Status: Open => Needs information
>
> actionparsnip requested more information:
> What video chip do you use?
>
> --
> To answer this request for more information, you can either reply to
> this email or enter your reply at the following page:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg/+question/184879
>
> You received this question notification because you asked the question.

A fresh re-install resolved both of my (seemingly unrelated) issues described above. I think one of the things that may have made a difference is that, during the reinstall, i had the video card in place BEFORE the software install and not added AFTER, as I did the first time. After that it was just a matter of Update, reboot, fiddle with monitor resolution and install and activate Nvidia drivers. The system Restarts w/o issues and my Administrator account has Root access. All has been stable thru well over a dozen restarts or off-on cycles.