Black screen after messing with desktop effects

**eightmillion** · August 2nd, 2008

Use your failsafe option and type in this command:

sudo apt-get remove compiz

After this finishes type exit and then select KDE from the sessions menu and log in normally.

**Teleka** · August 2nd, 2008

Well the command worked but nothing happened. I got this message:

Code:

Compiz is not installed, so not removed
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded

My friend said to delete a kde folder somewhere to get rid of the changes I made. Btw I downloaded a driver so I can see my files from vista, if you know how to get to what I need to delete by folder, if that made any sense.

**eightmillion** · August 2nd, 2008

Try failsafe again and run this command:

rm -r ~/.kde/share/config/compiz* ~/.compiz/ ~/.config/compiz/

This should get rid of any settings that are causing you problems. Then type exit again and log in. These commands will not have any output if they finish with no errors. If you get and error like: rm: cannot remove `~/.compiz/': No such file or directory that's ok.

**Teleka** · August 2nd, 2008

Ok I typed in the command successfully and got those errors. But when I get back in, I'm still having the problem.

**OldTimeTech** · August 2nd, 2008

this may sound defeatist and I don't want it too....

But since this is such a new install, I wouldn't think you've had a chance to do a lot to it or have a lot on it....

I would use gparted and reformat the hard drive and then re-install Ubuntu....at that point you would have your screen back and know to try one click box at a time

**Teleka** · August 2nd, 2008

Well i was thinking about erasing that partition but i wanted to know if there was anything I could do before I resorted to that, but I guess there isn't. Alright, I formatted that partition and reinstalled ubuntu and it was working fine till I started messing with the effects again. then as soon as I enabled the desktop effects, the screen went black again, and a window popped up that said do you want to keep these effects, I said no, and it went back, i tried checking the box again and hitting apply, and the screen didn't go black. So I was thinking that I just had to click no and try it again, so i spend like 30 mins customizing my stuff, and something happens so that I have to log out, and when I log back in the screen is all black and crap. I don't really want to use linux if it doesn't look good :/. Anyone have any ideas?

**Syock** · October 12th, 2008

The problem here is not because of Compiz, I think it's caused by KWin's compositing manager. I'm having a problem here too, and I can't find a way to enable the desktop effects yet.

My problem was: desktop becomes black after logging in, pointer is visible. If yours is the same, please try out these steps:

1. As soon as you get the black screen, press ctrl-alt-F1 to go to tty1
2. Login with your username and password.
3. Do this:

Code:

nano ~/.kde/share/config/kwinrc

4. Under the [Compositing] section, edit the line with:

Code:

Enabled=true

change it to

Code:

Enabled=false

save by ctrl-O, enter
5. Exit by ctrl-x, go back to X (the black screen) by ctrl-alt-F7
6. Press ctrl-alt-backspace (to restart KDM).

You should have your desktop again, without the fancy effects.

If you ever find solution to enable the effects, please share it with us!

**barzam** · November 20th, 2008

Thanks!
I managed to reset the settings and have visibility again! Now I just need to find a way to enable it I guess.

**tegnoto89** · December 10th, 2008

I've figured it out for my computer at least.

I just went to hardware drivers, and installed the driver for my 3D accelerated graphics card. Now they do work, though they slow my computer down significantly, so I left them alone