Big problem. Ubuntu is refusing to strat-up. Details inside.

[TheNad]

I was working on trying to get my laptop to play movies on my TV when this happened. Trying to set the computer to send its image to the TV via a VGA cable, I managed to change something that, after rebooting, made the laptop (dell studio 17") stop its startup after the Ubuntu loading screen. Two smaller Ubuntu loading logos appear evenly spaced along the top of the screen (in an odd green color) and it stops.

My first thought was that there might be a repair function on the boot disk but, alas, no such function. So, my next two ideas are as follows: 1) I'm currently running the try Ubuntu option off of the boot disk. If I'm "trying Ubuntu" is there a way to access the installed version of Ubuntu and somehow revert to an un screwed-up version (I don't know if Ubuntu automattically has a way to revert recent changes, if not then I guess I would have to figure out what I did by hand) or 2) Could I dual boot (currently the only OS installed is Ubuntu) with a second version of Ubuntu and from there access the damaged partition of Ubuntu and see if I can fix it from there?

If you have any other suggestions to try or an idea on how to implement the ones listed above then help is appreciated. I'm kinda freaking right now 'cause I don't want to have to reformat...

PS- Oh the irony! Now, with the bare bones "try Ubuntu" option the computer screen is showing up on my TV. It wasn't before. Gah!

[lisati]

My first thought is that you might have changed one of your laptop's settings which would normally be reset by some combination of fn + a function key. I'm not sure which one it is on a Dell.

[TheNad]

That is actually possible. I was messing around with some of them. Should I try to change those back then reboot or while rebooting or some other time?

EDIT: Well, I tried messing with the <Fn> key and the keys that are affected by it at the point where Ubuntu stalls to no avail. I tried a few suggestions I found for getting the <Fn> key "unstuck" (<fn>+<Num Lock> & <Fn>+<f11>) but neither of those worked either.