8.10 Alt CD Install - boots to wallpaper, no icons/bars

[Newfoundlander]

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone could give me hand with this problem.

Background info...

My dad's Acer Travelmate 4011 laptop had WinXP and was BSODing every two minutes so he asked me to install Ubuntu. His laptop just gave me a black screen using the regular Ubuntu 8.10 CD so I used the Alternate install CD and partitioned the entire drive (both CDs are defect-free and there are no problems with his RAM).

After the install and reboot, the login screen appeared but it would not accept his username/password. So I booted into rescue mode and added him as a user and made him super user.

Current problem...

The login screen accepts his username and password but then shows the Ibex wallpaper and mouse pointer but nothing else (no icons, bars, or text). It is not frozen because Ctrl+Alt+F1 gives me a console and the mouse response is very slow... takes about 5 seconds for the pointer to move and it is very jerky.

Any ideas what is happening and how to get Ubuntu working?

Thanks,

Steve

[Partyboi2]

Maybe you are suffering from this (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/259385#259385) bug. The work around to try is boot into recovery and remove compiz.

apt-get remove compiz compiz-core If that does not work then you can reinstall compiz with

sudo apt-get install compiz-core compiz

[net2chris]

I have a similar problem. I have an old Pentium 4 2.4G that I just got so sick of getting viruses when my 13 year old goes on the net.

My problem is as follows.
Fresh install went fine. Gets to username/password prompt and after just sits at a brownish/pink desktop. No icons, tray, etc. I tried pressing Ctrl/Alt/F1 - nothing.

I actually have reinstalled - but same.

[Newfoundlander]

We bought a new harddrive (same model as the old one) and the install went much better.

The desktop fully appears now and everything works however it is very sluggish with 512Mb of RAM. We may try increasing the memory to 1024Mb and see how the system responds. In the meantime, I will try removing compiz since my dad really doesn't need the eye candy anyway.

Thanks for the suggestions,

Steve

[Newfoundlander]

Removing compiz sped things up a bit but what the laptop really needed was more RAM. Once 1024Mb was installed, the machine worked like a dream. My dad is very happy with his "new" laptop.