Score:0

Desktop freezes before I can even log in

cn flag

I’m running Ubuntu 18.04. The other day, a box popped up and said “There are updates available” so I allowed it to update. It took about an hour, and I was not expecting it.

After that, when I restarted my computer, the mouse cursor appeared on a blank screen, but I could not move it. A minute later, the rest of the desktop appeared, and a box that said “The login keyring did not get unlocked when you logged in to your computer” and there’s a space for me to type in my password, but the whole screen is frozen. I cannot interact with it in any way. Eventually the screen goes dark, presumably waiting for some kind of input.

I am using an HP Envy, and I have Windows on this disk too. I can still boot to windows, and I can boot to Ubuntu with an external drive. I just can’t use my Ubuntu desktop because it gets frozen every time.

Is there a way I can repair whatever files are broken and go back to the way it was without losing all the files on the partition? Or even just back up all the files to an external drive and reinstall Ubuntu, that would be okay too.

Thanks.

vn flag
In the case where it's a gnome login issue (but symptoms sound a bit different than what I have seen myself) with the existing account, you might be able to enter a TTY (ctrl+alt+F3 for example), log in as your user, and create a new one (with a password). Then return to the login screen (`sudo service gdm restart` is brute force but would work). If desktop login then works for the new user, I'd guess something is wonky with some config files for the user, and might try looking at the various .* files in ~/
Michael Rago avatar
cn flag
When it freezes like this, it does not respond to any keyboard or mouse input whatsoever, so I can’t ctl-alt-f3 for a TTY. It’s already frozen before anything has appeared on the screen.
vn flag
This question is obviously old at this point, but a thought is to try and check the syslog/kern.log of the problem OS after booting an alternate/live OS. The complete freeze described sounds like maybe it could be a kernel panic (but other causes are possible).
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