Desktop blank, only cursor moves...! Help!

[jkd18]

Ok, Posting for a desperate friend.

I got Ubuntu 8.04.
Recently installed.
Till last evening everything was fine, then this morning, when I booted up, and signed in username and password and THEN the screen went blank. The cursor is there and moving but NOTHING ELSE!!!!
When I boot from Windows, all works fine...

Please help...!
Thanks.

[theozzlives]

open a terminal and post the result of lspci -l

[Black_Wolf_92]

btw if you don't know how to open a manual terminal, hit CTRL ALT F2.
Most likely it is a problem with your graphics card. I recomend installing Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty, especially if it is a clean install, as it may fix your issue anyway, but theres a lot of benifits going for it, unless you are looking to just stay on the LTS for another year or whatnot.

[jkd18]

Thanks.. Am just calling him to tell him what to do..! Hope it works...

[jkd18]

ok, after terminal window comes up, WHAT????

[Black_Wolf_92]

just telling you how to get the terminal up lol, so you can follow other guides. But guess i'm the only one replying. Ask him the model of his graphics card. If he doesn't know that, he should at least know if its ATI or Nvidia.

Now thats regardless at the moment, but should help later when you need accelerated graphics etc, but tell him to reboot his computer, and at the grub menu, choose RECOVERY mode, for 8.04.

There should be an option that reconfigures your graphics, however run most of them just to clean things up anyway, other than the free space clearer, which deletes files.