Ubuntu 14.04 broken desktop

[vkimball]

So today's updates to compiz and metacity and whatever other packages broke my desktop. I get a black screen and pointer but nothing else. Not sure how to try to debug this.

[grahammechanical]

At the Grub boot menu select Advance Options for Ubuntu and then select recovery mode. At the Recovery menu select Resume. Does that get you to a working desktop? If it does go to System Settings>Software & Updates>Additional Drivers tab and try a different video driver.

Regards.

[vkimball]

Maybe it's a hardware problem after all. Resume from recovery mode does the same thing. Black screen and pointer. If I try failsafeX, it says it cannot detect my graphics card. I'll try booting from an Ubuntu DVD next.