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I've managed to break my computer yet again, and this time, all of unity for my user is horribly corrupted. This happened when I tried fixing a problem I've had for a few moths with my Nvidia card using the instructions here. I then rebooted, but when I tried to log in, it would always do the "I'm logging in for you" spinning circle (sorry for my terrible description), and then it would dump me back into the login page (no "incorrect password" message, either). I purged and re-installed all Nvidia packages, but no luck. I then tried tried to see what was happening by using startx in a tty, but I got an error about access to .Xauthority timing out. I fixed that issue by making a new .Xauthority and reinstalling unity and ubuntu-desktop. Fixed that issue, then another popped up, which was there was no unity interface. Turns out unity got disabled, so I enabled it using compiz manager, but it still didn't work. Finally, I ran these two commands sudo dconf reset -f /org/compiz/ and setsid unity recommended somewhere (I've gone through way too many site today) and it works for one boot and the menu bar doesn't show up. I was able to log in as a different user just fine, so this seems to be a problem just with that one user. I have no idea what to do next and any help would be greatly appreciated.

Techdroid
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  • That is not how you install the nvidia driver - see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/Nvidia and http://askubuntu.com/questions/451221/ubuntu-14-04-install-nvidia-driver – Panther Apr 03 '15 at 03:24
  • @bodhi.zazen I was just trying every possible solution to my driver problem because it was getting terribly annoying. The driver part isn't the main problem now, it's getting my computer into a usable state – Techdroid Apr 03 '15 at 03:26
  • Often the soultion is to use linux compatible hardware. The nvidia driver is a closed source binary, so it you have problems with it, contact nvidia – Panther Apr 03 '15 at 03:29
  • Try using different login manager, such as gdm – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy Apr 06 '15 at 20:45

1 Answers1

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If this is only happening with one user, log in as the user that's still working and then create a new user with the same name as the first user but with a 2 added to it. (As example user names, the next section will use user and user2. Substitute this with your real user names)

Now,

  1. Open the file manager
  2. Browse to the /home/user directory
  3. Copy (don't move!) all the files from Downloads to /home/user2/Downloads
  4. Check you did a good job.
  5. Now delete /home/user/Downloads
  6. Go back to step 3 and repeat for Documents, Videos, ...
  7. In a terminal type the following command: deluser user --remove-home
  8. Log in as user2

  9. Sit back, relax and smile!

Fabby
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  • Don't thank me! ;-) If you like my answer, just click the little grey ☑ under the "0" now turning it into beautiful green. If you do not like my answer, click on the little grey down-arrow below the 0, and if you really like my answer, click on the little grey checkmark and the little up-arrow... If you have any further questions, go to http://askubuntu.com/questions/ask – Fabby Apr 06 '15 at 19:58
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    yeah, sorry about that, I must have missed the answer button. My thumb is too fat :) – Techdroid Apr 19 '15 at 06:15