Can't Anyone help with serious system crash?

[abn91c]

those symptoms are of a broken compiz, there are many post in the forums about your problem, if you can't get in in recovery mode then try in the terminal

sudo apt-get remove compiz
sudo apt-get remove compiz-core

[change_mode]

1. I can't open or copy most files as they are locked. I see them on a CD boot in Ubuntu 8.04, but can't do anything with the files that I see and can't even open most directories, except in Terminal where chmod and even rm does not work...because files are locked, I think.

Open a terminal and enter:

sudo nautilus

[stderr]

You say problems began when your system crashed. Was this a case of rebooting via the power button, or following an update, or...?

It could be graphics drivers, compiz, home directory/user profile. But I'm confused with these 'locked' files. What message do you actually get when you try to e.g. chmod one of your files in your home directory from the terminal? And what message do you get when you try to sudo chmod it? Would be good if you could run and post the output of (replacing afile.txt with an actual file):

$ echo $USER
$ ls -l afile.txt
$ chmod +x afile.txt
$ sudo chmod +x afile.txt

[gorucan]

set yourself root password then copy it to external disk, reinstall and paste contents of home dir back

[gorucan]

Open a terminal and enter:

sudo nautilus

sudo nautilus? better gksudo...?

[change_mode]

sudo nautilus? better gksudo...?

Doesn't really matter.