switching monitor settings causes failed boot

[intp4321]

I'm very new to unix/linux/kde/etc but I installed Kubuntu on a laptop (HP Pavillion dv6000) for work. I started playing around with the monitor settings in KDE and ended up having trouble getting back to the original settings. The monitor settings area showed two monitors, one set to primary (which I was playing around with), and one set secondary (which had its default settings, since I didn't touch it). Stupidly, I decided to just set the secondary to primary and primary to secondary. KDE hasn't booted since then.

After the Kubuntu loading screen finishes (the loading bar fills up), the screen goes black with a blinking prompt "_" in the top-left corner. I've tried typing in a dozen commands (help, ?, ls, etc) here but none does anything. If I press ctrl+alt+del, "Stopping K Display Manager: kdn" is displayed for a fraction of a second and then the Kubuntu loading screen comes back but this time the loading bar starts at 100% and shrinks to the right. After it finishes "loading" this time the computer reboots (or it does the forced file system check that it does every 20 boots, then reboots).

If I can use the GRUB loader menu to start in safe mode ("Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.20-15-generic (recovery mode)"), so can at least get to the command line. I just don't know how to fix KDE from there.

I know I can just reinstall the OS to fix this, but I have work data that may not be completely backed up (at least 95% is backed up. if there is anything not backed up, it shouldn't be anything important, but I'm not 100% sure), so I'm hoping there is a way to fix this issue from the command prompt in safe mode (or some other way).

Thanks for reading and any support

[intp4321]

Re: switching monitor settings causes failed boot

I figured I could edit some config file somewhere to change the monitor settings back to default but looks like I'm out of luck...

[Snowhog]

Re: switching monitor settings causes failed boot

What version of Kubuntu are you running?

[intp4321]

Re: switching monitor settings causes failed boot

"Kubuntu 7.04 i38" is what I wrote on the CD I had burned, it was burned about a year ago.

[Snowhog]

Re: switching monitor settings causes failed boot

If you haven't done much desktop customization, or simply don't care, you can remove the .kde folder in your /home directory. Can you boot into recovery mode, which will get you to the command line prompt?

[intp4321]

Re: switching monitor settings causes failed boot

no, I haven't done any customization, so that isn't an issue and yes, I can boot into recovery mode.

I searched and found a .kde folder in these 2 places:

/root/.kde
/home/<username>/.kde

I deleted the one in "/home/<username>/.kde" (using "rm -rf '.kde'") and rebooted. There was no change.

I then rebooting back into safe mode and deleted both of them (seems kubuntu recreated "/home/<username>/.kde" when I attempted to boot normally). There still was no change.


Thank you for your continuing help by the way.

[Snowhog]

Re: switching monitor settings causes failed boot

The .kde folders are recreated at next boot if they are removed. This is normal. What it does, is allow KDE to start with a 'default' desktop environment.

Okay, so you monitor issue remains. Reboot into recovery mode. From the command line, type:

cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/x11/xorg.conf_BAD
dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

This is making a copy of the screwed up xorg.conf file and then running the reconfiguration of the xserver to generate a new file. When completed, type:

shutdown -r now

to reboot. Post back.

[intp4321]

Re: switching monitor settings causes failed boot

The problems persists. After the reboot there was some additional things going on during boot before it went to the Kubuntu loading screen. I assume that had to do with having done the reconfigure.

[intp4321]

Re: switching monitor settings causes failed boot

This is just a follow-up post. I'm going to just wipe the drive and reinstall kubuntu. I'm in the process of tar'ing, gzip'ing, split'ing and burning 42 gigs of research data to dvds from safe-mode command line. hopefully I can at least get this right (this is all a first for me, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed )

[noelvh]

Re: switching monitor settings causes failed boot

If you reinstall setup 3 partitions, 1 for the root /, another for you home/, and the last for the swap.

See I like to do thing and end up breaking my system allot. This has helped me in that I can re-install the os with out loosing my data. Also I can get to my data other ways.

Noel Vh