Ubuntu 14.10 booting problems - no login screen

I updated my Ubuntu Version to 14.10 and cannot boot anymore. The Ubuntu loading screen still appears but afterwards I just get the cursor in the upper left and the rest of the window is totally black. The other booting options like secure mode also does not work. I have also tried out different kernel versions but that doesn't help unfortunately.l

My system is a ASUS UX32LN and I run it in dual boot with Windows 8.

Solution 1:

I've listed bellow possible issues. Most likely it is #1. After going through each procedure remember to reboot with sudo shutdown -r now command.

1. Install different greeter

Occasionally, the default greeter (aka login screen ) won't work properly. I've encountered such issue with Fedora 20, where default gdm greeter would distort the login screen badly, and the persons on this post also said changing greeter (as suggested by myself) helped.

To change a greeter, access tty console (by pressing Ctrl+Alt +F*, where F* is any F1 - F6 key), login, and download a greeter that you would like to have. For instance,

sudo apt-get install lightdm-gtk-greeter

or sudo apt-get install lightdm-kde-greeter

Personally , I keep both of these on my machine.

Next, you need to tell lightdm desktop manager which greeter to choose on boot. To do that, type

sudo nano /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

Nano is a command-line text editor, IMHO simplest to use. Most likely, this config file will be blank, so you would need to add the following lines:

[SeatDefaults] greeter-session=lightdm-gtk-greeter

where lightdm-gtk-greeter , would be the name of the greeter you installed. Bellow is the screen shot of my lightdm.conf file.

For more information on lightdm display manager configurations, you can read the following sources, as well as man page for lightdm (man lightdm):

Arch Wiki Lightdm Ubuntu Help Lightdm

2. Reinstall Unity desktop or install different desktop

Among other problems, it could be your desktop environment.

To reinstall Ubuntu's default desktop, do the following in tty:

apt-get install --reinstall ubuntu-desktop
apt-get install unity

To install a different desktop environment, you can refer to this post

To select different default desktop environment you can edit /usr/share/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/50-ubuntu.conf file. Again, you can do it using nano text editor.

sudo nano /usr/share/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/50-ubuntu.conf

Bellow is screen shot of my file:

Again, the name after = sign should be the name of the desktop environment you've installed, and it should boot by default.

3. Possible graphics card driver issue.

This issue is somewhat beyond my level of knowledge right now, but I can point you to this post on Ubuntu Help page

Small note on nano text editor:

Nano's key's are all listed in the lower part of the screen. ^ is equal to Ctrl button and ^O for instance , refers to Ctrl+O, which is equivalent to "Save file". Ctrl+X (^X) is "Exit with saving/ without saving".