White Screen of DEATH!

[Rabidmonkey1]

Hi all,

Hoping someone can help me figure out how to fix my problem.

I received an Acer Aspire 5735Z laptop as a Christmas gift today and it came with Vista, so obviously I installed Ubuntu. Everything was going smoothly until I installed dropbox and restarted.

For whatever reason, the desktop effects decided to bug out on me and gave me a completely white screen. I was able to disable fusion-icon from starting up at boot up, and that seemed to stop the white screen, but it took down compiz with it. Idk what's gone wrong, because the effects were working perfectly, and they simply aren't now. I tried to investigate it, but my Xorg file looks pretty blank. Here it is:

# xorg.conf (X.Org X Window System server configuration file)
#
# This file was generated by dexconf, the Debian X Configuration tool, using
# values from the debconf database.
#
# Edit this file with caution, and see the xorg.conf manual page.
# (Type "man xorg.conf" at the shell prompt.)
#
# This file is automatically updated on xserver-xorg package upgrades *only*
# if it has not been modified since the last upgrade of the xserver-xorg
# package.
#
# Note that some configuration settings that could be done previously
# in this file, now are automatically configured by the server and settings
# here are ignored.
#
# If you have edited this file but would like it to be automatically updated
# again, run the following command:
#   sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Section "Device"
	Identifier	"Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier	"Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier	"Default Screen"
	Monitor		"Configured Monitor"
	Device		"Configured Video Device"
EndSection

If anyone can direct me how to fix the desktop effects - it has to be something simple, right? - I'd be very appreciative! Thanks!

[Kareeser]

sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

Run that?

[Rabidmonkey1]

Got this in the terminal:

xserver-xorg postinst warning: overwriting possibly-customised configuration
   file; backup in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.20081225171018

Restarting now...

[Rabidmonkey1]

The first solution didn't seem to change anything. Still getting the white screen. Compiz spat back some interesting info, however:

Checking for Xgl: not present.
Detected PCI ID for VGA: 
Checking for texture_from_pixmap: not present. 
Trying again with indirect rendering:
Checking for texture_from_pixmap: present. 
Checking for non power of two support: present. 
Checking for Composite extension: present. 
Comparing resolution (1366x768) to maximum 3D texture size (2048): Passed.
Checking for Software Rasterizer: present. 
Software rasterizer detected, abortingaborting and using fallback: /usr/bin/metacity

Any ideas? Thanks!

[abn91c]

The first solution didn't seem to change anything. Still getting the white screen. Compiz spat back some interesting info, however:

Checking for Xgl: not present.
Detected PCI ID for VGA: 
Checking for texture_from_pixmap: not present. 
Trying again with indirect rendering:
Checking for texture_from_pixmap: present. 
Checking for non power of two support: present. 
Checking for Composite extension: present. 
Comparing resolution (1366x768) to maximum 3D texture size (2048): Passed.
Checking for Software Rasterizer: present. 
Software rasterizer detected, abortingaborting and using fallback: /usr/bin/metacity

Any ideas? Thanks!

remove compiz
sudo apt-get remove compiz
sudo apt-get remove compiz-core

[lukcic]

i have the same problem, but i can't even start x server... i tried to replace compiz with metacity but then i get error something like cannot start x....anybody can help?

[abn91c]

i have the same problem, but i can't even start x server... i tried to replace compiz with metacity but then i get error something like cannot start x....anybody can help?

when you remove compiz did you do metacity --replace

[karlmp]

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=807048