Desktop is just a black screen with a black cursor. HELP!

Discussion in 'Linux' started by mrpostman, Jul 7, 2009.

  1. mrpostman

    mrpostman

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    Hi,

    Big problems just as I thought I was learning something about this linpus linux system of my girlfriends.

    Acer Aspire One running Linupus Linux and XFCE.

    Netbook starts to boot, shows the Acer splash screen but then all I get is a black desktop, with a black movable cursor in the middle. No Panel, no Icons or anything.

    I cant even press alt and F2 to launch the program launcer, cant alt ctrl and del and I cant right click either to bring up the desktop menu.

    I'll tell you exactly what I did and hopefully someone can give me a workaround.

    I started off by doing this tutorial with no problems...

    viewtopic.php?f=39&t=4310#p28777

    then I ended up doing this: viewtopic.php?f=39&t=736

    after the second one, it was ok for the first few shutdowns even though i forgot to do the running of "xfce4-panel &" before I went into terminal and did killall on the majority of the gnome and xfce processes and then restarting.

    Then the panel of xfce started to show up as unconfigured (its like a star icon or something on the panel)

    After a couple mor erestarts hoping it would come back, the desktop just hangs as its doing.

    Do I need to do a factory restore?

    Urgen please. Its my girlfriends laptop and I feel bad for breaking it!
     
    mrpostman, Jul 7, 2009
    #1
  2. mrpostman

    DutchDK

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    Fastest way to fix this is to backup any documents that might have been saved on the AAO by your girlfriend (/home/user/ folders) onto an USB key, and then do a factory restore. After the factory restore, just copy the documents back to the homedirectory.
     
    DutchDK, Jul 7, 2009
    #2
  3. mrpostman

    mrpostman

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    Excellent! I ran the acer recovery today during my lunch break. Booting up fine now, luckily she had all the stuff saved on her memory card so thats good.

    However, I do have a question about what you suggested...

    You told me to do a backup of the documents on the computer hdd, but I couldnt get onto terminal or run anything. Is there a way to get into a basic level when starting up the netbook? Just for my own curiosity really...

    Thanks :)
     
    mrpostman, Jul 7, 2009
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  4. mrpostman

    DutchDK

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    Not with the default Linpus Lite installation on the AAO. I have prepped an old 512MB USB key with the SystemRescueCD distrobution, so I just boot that up on machines that has been fubar'ed, and then mount the drive I want to copy stuff from. Great tool to have in those cases. Get it here : http://www.sysrescd.org
     
    DutchDK, Jul 7, 2009
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  5. mrpostman

    rbil

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    fsck might fix the prob without the necessity of a complete re-install. Worth trying if you already have a version of Linux booting from a flash key.

    Cheers.
     
    rbil, Jul 8, 2009
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