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**Isix** · Feb 21, 2009, 02:47 PM

Re: Aghh. Intrepid crashing on start up. Emergency Help Please

What happens when you type CTRL+ALT+F2 when you are at the "black screen". That should take you to a CLI ...

**Peter Randall** · Feb 21, 2009, 03:12 PM

Re: Aghh. Intrepid crashing on start up. Emergency Help Please

Thanks for responding

It takes me to a log-in screen. I try to log in using my password and it repeats 3 times and then the cursor flashes double time and it freezes. I've come back out into dreaded XP to respond.

Should add that to go from white screen to black I clicked the mouse.

Still rolling around in cyber agony from virtual sore gonads. I Think the drink might help.

Regards

**dibl** · Feb 21, 2009, 05:23 PM

Re: Aghh. Intrepid crashing on start up. Emergency Help Please

Did you try booting the Live CD? Does it boot and run correctly?

I'm inclined to focus on two possible causes:

1. defective installation CD

2. video problem of some kind

If the Live CD boots and runs correctly, we can rule out a problem with your hardware, and consider the installation process and your video system.

**Isix** · Feb 21, 2009, 11:29 PM

Re: Aghh. Intrepid crashing on start up. Emergency Help Please

Peter please try dibl's advice --- try to boot from the CD

**Peter Randall** · Feb 22, 2009, 05:13 AM

Re: Aghh. Intrepid crashing on start up. Emergency Help Please

Good Morning Everyone. Thank you for responding.

I tried to boot from the CD I made to do the install using the run from CD option.
The screen went one third black at the top and two thirds pink at the bottom with a one inch square box in the top left corner filled with vertical coloured stripes. The black section then gained sloping dark blue lines that flashed once to white and back to blue.

I did Ctrl/Alt/F2 to attempt to escape and ended up on a screen headed 'Linux ubuntu 2.6.27-7 Generic' followed by a disclaimer and what I take to be a command line. It had an instruction 'To run a command as administrator use sudo command'. In front of the cursor which was flashing quickly was a line 'ubuntu@ubuntu:"$'.

I got out of this by pressing the start button on the PC which initiated the shut down and allowed me to eject the CD.

Before responding I did try to boot from the hard drive. The only thing of note was a message reading 'unclean shutdown checking drives. It checked dev sdb6 and then went to the start screen where I enter my password. As before it crashed halfway through the loading process after this. This screen does have other options listed on it. Would they help?

The machine runs happily in windows XP from which regrettably I am using to write this. It also worked fine with Dapper Drake.

The PC is a HP Pavillion, 2.66GHz Pentium 4, 512mb ddr memory, and Nvidia GeForce MX440 graphics card.

I have read of various problems with KDE 4. Would I be better reinstalling the OS in Hardy with 3.5?

What is my next move please?

Thanks in anticipation.

Peter

p.s. Banjaxed (helps to spell it correctly) - word of Scots and Irish use meaning stumped, stuck, broken or destroyed.

**dibl** · Feb 22, 2009, 07:19 AM

Re: Aghh. Intrepid crashing on start up. Emergency Help Please

Observing the problem with the Live CD is helpful -- but it leaves us wondering whether the CD was burned correctly, or whether there is a video display issue that requires a boot option. With the MX440, I would not expect such an issue. When you boot the Live CD and get that first text menu, try pressing F4 "Safe Graphics" and then go ahead, and let's see what you get. Another thing to try, at the same point, is F6 and enter the option "xforcevesa" with no quote marks, and go ahead.

When you made the Live CD, did you set the burn speed to 4X? If you let the burning software set the speed automatically, you may have a defective CD -- these Linux Live CDs use extreme compression and consequently the burning has to be done very slowly to work correctly.

In other words, the CD might be banjaxed.

**Peter Randall** · Feb 22, 2009, 10:11 AM

Re: Aghh. Intrepid crashing on start up. Emergency Help Please

Thanks for the reply.

The good news is the DVD I made boots in safe graphics mode. I can go in and see all three partitions of the drive.

The DVD was made using K3b and the burn dvd ISO option. If there was the opportunity to limit speed this was not done.

With regard to the F6 option, when pressed it shows a line of text as follows:
Boot options file=/cdrom/pressed/kubuntu.seed boot=caspar initrd=/caspar/initrd.gz quiet splash--|
Do I add "xforcevesa" to the end of this line of text or delete it and replace it with "xforcevesa"?

With the DVD running in safe graphics mode do I still need to do this?

Thanks in anticipation.

Peter

**dibl** · Feb 22, 2009, 10:55 AM

Re: Aghh. Intrepid crashing on start up. Emergency Help Please

Good -- little bit of progress here!

Running in "Safe Graphics" mode is fine for troubleshooting and exploring settings and so forth. No boot option needed.

If you want to try the "xforcevesa" option, then you press F6 and add it (after a single space) to the end of the existing options on that line. There are other boot options that might be helpful, if this one doesn't help. But it definitely appears to be a video display problem.

**Peter Randall** · Feb 22, 2009, 12:04 PM

Re: Aghh. Intrepid crashing on start up. Emergency Help Please

I entered "xforcevesa" on the end of the line in F6 as instructed.

First it went to a monchrome screen with some pattern and then went to the colours of the default KDE desktop with distorted pixelated images. The mouse pointer showed as a white pixelated vertical line one third the height of the screen, thicker in the middle but not symetrical. You could move it. It would disappear off the bottom of the screen but not the top.

Where do we go next?

Thanks

Peter

**dibl** · Feb 22, 2009, 02:35 PM

Re: Aghh. Intrepid crashing on start up. Emergency Help Please

OK.

There are only two video drivers that can be considered for the MX440: the open source "nv" driver and version 96.43.07 of the proprietary Nvidia driver. If it were me, I would first try the proprietary driver, since it should provide the best 3D performance your chip is capable of. Here's how:

1. From a user login, exit the X server with Ctrl-Alt-F1, and log in at the CLI. Shut down X with

Code:

sudo /etc/init.d/kdm stop

2. Install EnvyNG:

Code:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install envyng-qt

3. Run EnvyNG in text mode:

Code:

sudo envyng -t

4. As a precautionary measure, first choose "Remove the driver" or "Uninstall" or whatever, from the EnvyNG menu. Then when it finishes, choose "Install the Driver" and let it install.

5. I don't remember whether Envy offers to overwrite your xorg.conf file or not. If it doesn't, don't try to run the X server yet -- just choose "exit" back to the command line.

6. At the command line

Code:

sudo nvidia-xconfig --add-argb-glx-visuals --composite

7. Now you can issue

Code:

startx

I'll cross my fingers and say a chant ....

**Peter Randall** · Feb 22, 2009, 04:50 PM

Re: Aghh. Intrepid crashing on start up. Emergency Help Please

Please tell me if I am doing something stupid.

I load the installed OS to the splash screen.
I press ctrl/alt/F1
It brings up a screenthat starts "Boot from (hd1,0) ext3 etc etc etc
Goes to "starting up..."
Goes to "loading please wait..."
"19+0 records in"
"19+0 records out"
"kinit: name_to_dev_t(/dev/disk/by_uuid/ "then a string of separated alphas and numerics
"kinit:trying to resume from /dev/disk/by uuid/" and the same string
"Ubuntu 8.10 Peters_Computer ttyl"
"Peters_Computer login:"
I typed peter (the name on the splash screen log in)
"password"
I typed in my password
"last login Sun Feb 22 14:43:48 GMT 2009 on :0"
"Linux Peters_Computer 2.6.27_11 generic #1 SMP Thu Jan 29 19:24:39 UTC 2009 i686"
There is then the disclaimer
"peter@Peters_Computer:
I typed the first line of code you sent
"[sudo] password for peter:"
I typed my password
"sorry try again"
I typed my password but nothing happened as I typed so I pressed enter.
"[sudo] password for peter:*reloading common unix printing system:cupsd
*reloading system log daemon"
I switched the machine off and tried again. This time it will not take my password. Nothing happens when I type it in. I press the keys but nothing appears on the screen.

Am I doing something dumb or is the machine doing this out of spite?

Look forward to hearing from you

Regards

Peter

**dibl** · Feb 22, 2009, 05:10 PM

Re: Aghh. Intrepid crashing on start up. Emergency Help Please

It's not stupid if you haven't ever had to get through these things before. And assumptions carried over from experiences with computers running other OSs make it even worse.

I was thinking that you had found a way to log into the KDE GUI, even with bad resolution or something. So, I see that you actually are not there yet. My bad assumption!

At the boot menu, when you press enter to boot Kubuntu, and it gets to the splash "greeter" (the screen with two blank places, where you enter your user name and your password), there is a little menu down at the bottom of that. If you can click it and choose "command line login", then that's the thing to do.

At the command line, first type your user name and press "Enter". Then type your password exactly as you set it during installation -- beware of the Caps Lock key screwing this up for you. You will not see any screen feedback while you type your password -- that's for security. Press "Enter" when you have finished your password, and you should have a text screen with a blinking cursor at the command line -- it looks like this:

Code:

dibl@ibex:~$_

So, at this point you can start with #2 in my previous instruction, and let's see how you fare.

**Peter Randall** · Feb 23, 2009, 04:06 AM

Re: Aghh. Intrepid crashing on start up. Emergency Help Please

Good Morning again.

Progress is being made. I downloaded envy as instructed. After uninstalling the driver, it prompted me to restart the computer which I did. I re-entered and loaded the driver. The one listed is 96.43.09 which I take to be a newer version of that you suggested. This loaded and requested a restart which I did.

I then entered the nvidia xconfig line and got the following message:

Using x configuration file: "/etc/x11/xorg.conf"
PARSE ERROR: Parse erroron line 35 of section module in file /etc/x11/xprg.conf.
"Disable" is not a valid keyword in the section.
sh: pkg-config: not found.
Option "addARGBGLXVisuals" "True" added to screen "screen0"
Backed up file '/etc/x11/xorg.conf' as /'etc/x11/xorg.conf.backup'
New configuration file written to '/etc/x11/xorg.conf'

I take it this means something didn't quite work.
I then entered "startx" and the machine booted to my desktop.
However.
The screen now flickers
I have a window in the middle of the screen from Open Office.org 2.4 which will minimise but not close. There is no text on it, just the title in the top left corner. It looks like the file open context window with no text in it. This window looks the same size as the shadow I could just see when the thing first crashed. i should add I am locked out of open office. I cannot open it from any of its different applications. Is this significant?

I also had a message appear and disappear quite quickly referring to restricted drivers. I didn't manage to read and comprehend it all before it disappeared.

I am in Firefox writing this and the application is slightly offset to the left (maybe 5%) leaving a black line down the right hand side of the screen.

I hope we are now on a home run

Regards

Peter

**Peter Randall** · Feb 23, 2009, 04:35 AM

Re: Aghh. Intrepid crashing on start up. Emergency Help Please

Some more information.

When I went to switch off it took me back to the command line.
There was some standard information on the screen plus the following:
(==) Log file: "/var/log/xorg.O.log",Time: Mon Feb 23 09.03.29 2009
(= =) Using config file "etc/x11/xorg.conf"
(EE) Failed to load module "type1" (module does not exist, 0)

Waiting for xserver to shut down

This was followed by The command line

As I don't know how to shut the machine down from here I pressed the start button on the PC which did the job.

i then restarted the computer and tried to log in as normal. The following message came up in a box in the centre of the screen:

"x session: unable to launch failsafe x session --- x terminal emulator not found; aborting."
There was a okay button which I clicked which removed the message and left me at the log-in screen.

I got back in by going to the command line and using "startx"

I hope this helps you.

Regards

Peter

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