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After logging in, many elements of the GUI go black.

GUI Screenshot

In the above image you'll see that the terminal is just a black box on the right. The black bar just above the unity launcher is the onscreen keyboard which is still responsive, even though it's blackened, which is true of all apps; I can close the terminal (which in the picture is the black box on the right) by randomly clicking in the upper-left corner. The same happens even for drop-downs; clicking on the wifi or the power logo on the menu bar on the top just gives me a black box.

This problem used to happen before and it would be fixed with just a simple restart. Now a restart wont't work. As you can see, I can't use the terminal, and I cant access a lot of things since the GUI will just be blacked out most of the time. I can't use my system like this. Please help.

slava
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TheYellowBankai
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  • Have you themed your computer? Try this... create a new temporary account named "guest". Log into the guest account, and see if the problem is still there. – heynnema Mar 23 '19 at 16:39
  • Yes, the problem still persists in the guest account as well. Just after posting this question though I came across other similar questions, and I'm working on the solutions given there. https://askubuntu.com/questions/492470/14-04-ubuntu-black-borders-black-terminal?noredirect=1&lq=1 https://askubuntu.com/questions/760934/graphics-issues-after-while-installing-ubuntu-16-04-16-10-with-nvidia-graphics https://askubuntu.com/questions/360598/13-10-black-borders-black-terminal – TheYellowBankai Mar 23 '19 at 19:27
  • What video card make/model? What version driver? Edit your question and show me sudo lshw -C video. – heynnema Mar 23 '19 at 19:30
  • I can't show the terminal output because the terminal is blacked out. But it's an Nvidia 960M with the 410.78 driver. I had the 415.27 driver installed and thought changing the driver version would help but it didnt. – TheYellowBankai Mar 23 '19 at 19:36
  • There's a 418.56 driver out now. Try it. https://www.geforce.com/drivers/results/145182 – heynnema Mar 23 '19 at 19:37
  • @heynnema You were on to something when you talked about themes. I managed to fix the issue 2 days ago, by following the below answer after noticing that the unity --reset command kinda worked. https://askubuntu.com/a/377460/937306

    I must also mention that I discovered I could use XTerm and it really helped. For me, it seems that the above problem was not very much related to the nvidia driver problem which I also had, since both of them got resolved separately and seemingly independently of one another.

     – TheYellowBankai Mar 26 '19 at 16:03
  • Should I put together a quick answer, or let it go? – heynnema Mar 26 '19 at 16:08
  • I think it's better if you put in an answer so that this question can be marked solved and maybe help someone else. Thanks a lot for your help. – TheYellowBankai Mar 26 '19 at 19:40
  • I'm not quite sure what to put into an answer, since you actually fixed the problem. Why don't you write the answer, and in two days, you can mark it as accepted. Fair enough? – heynnema Mar 26 '19 at 21:24

1 Answers1

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Here's how I managed to fix the issue:

  • I noticed that unity --reset fixed the issue but also froze my laptop in the process.
  • So I searched for workarounds related to unity and found the following fix (askubuntu.com/a/377460/937306) which I will repost here

Reset compiz settings: dconf reset -f /org/compiz/

Then restart Unity: setsid unity

Using XTerm (an alternative to the Terminal which can be searched on the unity launcher dash) helped a lot. I must also mention I had nvidia driver issues which I resolved later by following How can I uninstall a nvidia driver completely ? and How do I install the Nvidia drivers?

TheYellowBankai
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