Black screen after changing desktop preferences

[raz230]

Hello,

I am using Kubuntu 9.04 KDE 4 w/ATI video card using restricted drivers.

I was looking for the hotkey that lets you toggle between your desktops and I was in System Settings > Desktop under effects. I changed the desktop changer effect from "Slide" to "Cube" and when I hit Apply my desktop went black. I tried to restart the X server with CTRL ALT BCKSPC but I had to reboot.

Rebooting did not help. I booted to Grub and went to recovery mode and chose the option to auto-repair graphics problems. That also did nothing.

Please don't tell me I have to re-install because of changing one option :)

Is there a way to reset the whatever back to how I had it so I can use my computer? I presume I can boot to shell and do some stuff there but I don't know what I did.

Any help is appreciated.

raz

[Happy_Man]

You can always install something light like fluxbox from a terminal (use alt-F3 to get to one), and then use that to open the system settings and change the effect back.

[raz230]

I wish it was that easy.
When my system boots it all appears normal. I get the kubuntu progress bar and then when I see my desktop, it's black with some smeared video lines near the top. I have no mouse. The video appears to toggle - it goes full on black, then back to the first part with the "smear" It does this sometimes. Not always.

I cannot open a shell prompt. Well, maybe I am. I can't see it.

I have to boot to recovery where I can only login as root.

I removed my .kde/.... kwinrc file and rebooted. I tried setting the compositing to false as some other postes suggested.

I can't beleive changing one option via the system settings could cause such a disaster! This computer is litterally brand new.

Everything I've researched suggested xorg.cong or ~/.kde.../kwinrc was the problem. I've tried both and neither worked.

At the shell prompt, when I get to the root login (which I enabled the other day before this happened) I can go 'startx' under root and the same thing happens.

I've looked in the logs under /var/log/syslog and I see

Failed to start x server and various x server messages but nothing really helpful.

I guess I will have to rebuild. yay

[raz230]

YIPPY! I fixed it.

I realized after my last post that since the problem happened to the root user also that the problem was not located in my home folder- so it had t be the xorg.conf file

Previously I renamed it to .old but I didn't notice a new one getting generated.

I went to

/etc/X11 and "ls"'d the folder. I noted some xorg.conf.YYYYMMDDHHMMSS files from today- before my problem began.

I mv'd my xorg.conf file to a .old file and cp's the earliest previous copy of the other xorg files to xorg.conf, did a reboot and I'm back.

Now, do you think the syslog could have had a more helpful error message, or even better, KDE should not show me options that are not safe to use?

Anyway, it's better now

[mattchenzo]

man, i hate to sound retarded, but i did the same thing as you, and dont exactly know how to do what you said to do to fix it...
i am reading up on everything i can, but trying to learn how to do this stuff takes some time, and i was hoping not to have to keep using vista for too long...

dumb-dumb instructions please???


:(

[Happy_Man]

man, i hate to sound retarded, but i did the same thing as you, and dont exactly know how to do what you said to do to fix it...
i am reading up on everything i can, but trying to learn how to do this stuff takes some time, and i was hoping not to have to keep using vista for too long...

dumb-dumb instructions please???


:(
All OP did was restore a backup. Here, just copy and paste this into your terminal, one line at a time, and you'll be golden.


cd /etc/X11
ls


Here, note the exact name of a backup xorg.conf (it'll be in the format xorg.conf.YYYYMMDDHHMMSS) from when you know your system was working. Try to choose the most recent backup you remember working. Copy it down.


mv xorg.conf xorg.conf.old
cp xorg.conf.YYYYMMDDHHMMSS xorg.conf

Reboot. See if that works.