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I just tried starting up my computer and on the login screen I had terrible video quality and it won't accept my password.

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Just a few hours ago I was able to log in just fine. I booted up my computer, entered my password, and got right in. I had a red exclamation point in the top right though, something about missing packages. I tried to run updates but it didn't seem to be fixing it. I just said "screw it, I'll do it later" and continued what I was doing.

A few hours later I went to boot up my computer again. I got to the log-in screen and it was super low quality with a one inch black margin on each side, as if the video driver was broken. This makes sense because I had custom installed the Nvidia drivers from the website. The open-source driver was causing me problems. That was a couple weeks ago though. I had no problems with the proprietary driver until today. (If that's even what caused this.)

Anyways when I enter my password it makes the login noise but it doesn't log me in, it just resets the screen and asks for my password again. Same thing happens when I try to login as guest. Right now I'm running a Ubuntu live session from my Ubuntu disk. I was able to backup my files but I don't know how to backup my game saves. Otherwise, I would already be formatting the disk and reinstalling Ubuntu.

So I guess this all boils down to three questions.

  1. Can I fix this without a reinstall?
  2. Where are my game saves probably saved at? Are they in root? I wasn't able to access root from the live session.
  3. Why did this happen and how can I prevent it from happening in the future? (Everything was fine a couple hours ago)

I'll be messing around and seeing if I can figure anything out. Thanks for your time

Nug U
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  • I logged into terminal and uninstalled nvidia and reinstalled nouveau by following the second guy's instructions here: http://askubuntu.com/questions/163883/cannot-properly-boot-into-ubuntu-after-installation-of-nvidia-driver?rq=1

    It didn't change anything

     – Nug U Sep 02 '16 at 00:57

1 Answers1

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So I'm really impatient. I want to fix my PC and I'm not getting any answers yet.

So here's what I did:

  1. Booted up a live session from the Ubuntu disk
  2. sudo apt-get update
  3. sudo apt install gksu
  4. gksudo then type nautilus so I can access protected folders like /root/ (Note: My saved games were in the folder /home/$USER/.local/.. after clicking View -> Show Hidden Files and Folders.)
  5. Copied all my saved games and documents over to an external drive
  6. Reinstall Ubuntu

This is certainly not ideal. I have no idea why this problem happened in the first place so it surely could happen again. Also I'm sure there's a way to fix it without a reinstall but I want my computer back. Please any further input is highly appreciated even though I've already gone through with this.

Nug U
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  • If I had caught you an hour earlier, I would have recommended this: http://askubuntu.com/questions/760934/graphics-issues-after-installing-ubuntu-16-04-with-nvidia-graphics. – TheWanderer Sep 02 '16 at 03:37
  • Thanks. I tried something similar to that but I'd be interested to see if that works. I'll try it if the problem happens again. I don't mind reinstalling the OS. I've reinstalled my OS a few times over the past few months and it's really teaching me to be organized and to learn how to backup stuff. I'm on a fresh copy of Ubuntu now. Currently making a list of all packages I install and saving it to my external drive for the next time I need a fresh install – Nug U Sep 02 '16 at 05:29