ubuntu 7.10 upgraded to 8.04, now blank screen at login

[shortridge11]

i have a personal file server that i had 7.10 on. I decided today that 8.04 was probably debugged enough to warrant an upgrade. I upgraded, and now when i log in there's just a green screen. It's the same color as the login screen, but nothing happens. I can ssh into it, but i can't get the gui up and running. I don't know if it makes a difference, but i was using ubuntu studios when i upgraded.

[shortridge11]

when i type

sudo dpkg --configure -a

it says too many errors, and nothing really happens. Now, instead of the recovery kernels being 7.10 kernels, they're 8.04, and there are 3 instead of 2. I want to get to the login screen, but each kernel just gets me a blank screen.

[shortridge11]

i was messing around with keystrokes at the blank screen, when i pressed ctrl alt F1. This let me log in in the terminal, and everything worked from there