Cfrgtkky

I upgraded my Ubuntu OS from 12.10 to 13.04 and after the process of upgrading it via Software Updater , it requested me to restart the computer .

I restarted and on boot I proceed to the Purple with Ubuntu text and 4 dots below it and proceed to the black screen with a blinking underscore (_)

Please help me , i have all my files in there and I can't access them ..
I tried the grub menu edit that other questions pointed out but it doesnt seem to do anything .

Please helppp /:

Try the following:

press Ctrl+Alt+F1

You'll see a terminal for login, enter your credentials and execute the following command:

sudo service lightdm --full-restart

Enter your password again and you should see the login page

I dont know if this will help you but, this happened to me after I moved around harddrives from one computer to another. I had a black screen with a comand cursor blinking and taunting me everytime I tried to boot. After reformating and installing and reinstalling. I checked my setup and my comp was booting the wrong hard drive. I swapped the drive order and the bootloader came up.

Again, this was just my experience with the black screen cursur blinking. Solution was:

F2 > boot > swap boot order of drives.

I had similar problem and solved it by following steps:

first press Ctrl+Alt+F1(or F2, F3, F4)

You'll see a terminal for login, enter your credentials and execute the following command:

ps -aux | grep --color "lightdm"

then, you will see processes that run lightdm, so you should kill those process:

kill -9 -15 <process number>

after that graphical login screen appears.

Have you tried the options listed at this My computer boots to a black screen, what options do I have to fix it?
Also, do you have a discrete graphics card, possibly with Optimus technology? If yes, please install bumbleebee project from Bumblebee wiki.

Apparently this is an issue that can happen, especially with SSD drives.

The solution would be to install gdm and use that instead.

sudo apt-get install gdm

and when prompted, select it.
If you want to switych back to lightdm:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm

This is the source.

Here’s what worked for me, on a Dell Precision M6800 laptop running Ubuntu 16.10:

First, at the black screen with the cursor in the top-left (which wasn’t blinking in my case), I followed this answer and pressed Ctrl+Alt+F1 to show a terminal, and logged in with my username and password.

That answer suggests running sudo service lightdm --full-restart, but the command only gave me an error. Instead, this answer’s solution of removing and reinstalling lightdm was what brought me forward. Note that a wired internet connection is required for the apt-get install part; wireless internet is apparently not set up yet at this stage in the boot process.

sudo apt-get purge lightdm

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install lightdm

dpkg-reconfigure lightdm

sudo reboot

After this reboot, the login screen successfully showed, at the point in time where previously the one-line log message disappeared and the underline cursor appeared. But when I entered my correct password to log in, I only got the error “Failed to start session” in red text.

The article ‘Fix “Failed To Start Session” At Login In Ubuntu 14.04’ helped with that. At the login screen with the error message, I pressed Ctrl+Alt+F1 again to show a terminal, and logged in. Then I ran sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop, which installed ubuntu-desktop for the first time. Finally, I ran sudo reboot to reboot.

When the computer finished rebooting, I was able to successfully log in at the login screen and return to using the computer normally.

I was unable to switch to other TTYs as is recommended in other answers. I had a blinking cursor, but otherwise my system was unresponsive.

Root cause for me: Bad package upgrade (?improper shutdown?) left my system/dpkg in a broken state.

Detection: After using recovery mode to get to the root shell, I tried apt-get purge lightdm as per previous answers. This command failed, with a message: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'sudo dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem.

Fix:

1. Get to a root shell if you haven't already. You can do this by booting into 'recovery mode' from grub, and using the keyboard to select the root prompt option.


2. Run dpkg --configure -a.


3. If this was indeed your problem, it will resume some package installation that was not completed. For me, that was a kernel upgrade with an nvidia driver component.


4. Be patient. After it is completed, try reboot and see if it has fixed your problem.