Activated fancy windows effects, can't see anything now - Solved

[alamun]

Hi, I installed Kubuntu 8.10 for the first time (first time I use any Linux os). I liked it, and went into the system settings, partially to see whether I could turn off touching the touchpad to click (this is a laptop), and then I saw that you could activate all sorts of cool window effects, like shadows and such. I started enabling several such effects indiscriminately, and when I clicked apply, I couldn't see anything anymore.

The screen is dark, but I can tell everything is still running, because when I click where the K button is supposed to be, I see a gray box that presumably is the start menu. I just can't read anything. It's a solid gray box.

Also, it shuts down properly when I press the power button. It boots to the log in screen, and when I log in, I see the wallpaper and the initial box in the middle with the picture of the hard drive, and when other stuff starts to appear in the box, everything goes white, then back to the darkness. Again, when I press where the K button is, I see the box pop up. When I press the power button to shut down, the wallpaper briefly disappears before it shuts down properly.

Any help would be appreciated.

[muzicman0]

Re: Activated fancy windows effects, can't see anything now

ok...easy to fix. boot into recovery mode, which will drop you to the console view (no GUI).

you may or may not have to log in...

enter these commands:

cp -r /home/{your user name here}/.kde /home/{your user name here}/.kde-old

then enter

rm -r /home/{your user name here}/.kde

(so for me, the path would be /home/steven/.kde)

What that will do is backup all of your settings to a file in your home directory called '.kde-old', and the second command will delete the original file, so when you log in, the file will be restored to defaults.

reboot, and it should be like a new install.

I do have a question though...what kind of video card do you have? If we install the drivers, we can probably make the desktop effects work for you.

mm0

[alamun]

Re: Activated fancy windows effects, can't see anything now

After putting in that command, I get an error "missing destination file operand after '/home/alberto/' etc"

[kubicle]

Re: Activated fancy windows effects, can't see anything now

Removing whole .kde is rather overkill'ish to disable the effects.

I'd rather do this:
1. When you see the login screen, press Ctrl+Alt+F1 to get to a virtual terminal
2. login with your username+password
3. run 'kwriteconfig --group Compositing --key Enabled --file kwinrc false'
4. Press Ctrl+Alt+F7 to get back to GUI login
5. login

[alamun]

Re: Activated fancy windows effects, can't see anything now

I need to go run errands, but I will try your suggestion when I get back. Thank you.

[alamun]

Re: Activated fancy windows effects, can't see anything now

Kubicle's suggestion worked, and I am typing this on Konqueror! As for the video card issue, the first time I ran Kubuntu before I messed it up, a window popped up telling me that I could download a proprietary driver that enabled 2d acceleration and other such things. I told it to download, but I'm not sure it completed before the issue occurred. It did not pop up this time. Right now I'm running adept and installing all the updates before I touch the settings again.

[muzicman0]

Re: Activated fancy windows effects, can't see anything now

you can manually load the 'Hardware Drivers' application from the kickoff menu, that is the app that will allow you to install the nvidia driver the 'ubuntu' way. I personally install the nvidia proprietary driver, which is the hard way, but I get the latest release.

If you have either nvidia or ATI, you can use a program called envgNG to install the driver, which I have heard works well.

mm0.

[alamun]

Re: Activated fancy windows effects, can't see anything now - Solved

I remember the notification I saw the first time I ran Kubuntu told me something to the effect of only being able to activate the special effects with the proprietary driver. If Adept is the only way to get the program you mentioned to get the proprietary driver, then I have to wait 20 minutes for the updates to finish.

Edit: I followed a helpful link in the user dibl's signature, and went to the Hardware Drivers in System. It gave me the option to use the proprietary drivers, and I am downloading and installing now. Thanks to everyone for all the help!