Ubuntu Failure - Help Resetting

[den160593]

Hi Guys. Was wondering if you could help me, as support in ubuntuforums and Launchpad has been virtually non-existant in my 4 days of trying to solve this problem :(

My problem is this. I was trying to get dual screen to work, and a guide on the net said to download a new driver. So I went to the ATI website and downloaded a new ATI Radeon 9600 driver. When it installed however, my screen was compressed, so I tried to change the resolution to match my screens (I have dual screens - so  that's ultimately what I wanted) - and from there it all went haywire. My screen started scrolling up and down. I thought this might have been a refresh error - so I restarted. And I haven't been able to enter Ubuntu graphically since.

Now the only advice I got from Ubuntuforums (Launchpad hasn't even replied) was to run Ubuntu in recovery mode and do xfix.

Start in recovery mode nad at the menu choose xfix, once xfix is finished select resume and continue to the desktop. THis assumes you are rinning Intrepid (v. 8.10) if you are running an older version, in recovery mode type at the prompt:

Code:

dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

both actions will reset your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file to the default, and you should be able to get to your desktop.

Now I did the top one. However nothing happened. Now whenever I try to launch Ubuntu for some weird reason it shows me the Windows XP startup page (I have dual boot Windows XP and Ubuntu) - cept blurred, multi-coloured (on the edges) and completely un-responsive. So really, no change.

I didn't do the second thing, because I'm using 8.10 Ubuntu. Would me doing that change anything? I just don't want to wreck anything further.

So I was wondering, could I somehow reset it to Ubuntu's defaults? I dunno, I got the LiveCD still, is there a way to reset it from that? Or from terminal line on startup? Could you guide me through, because I'm a Linux newbie completely.

Thanks, hopefully you guys can help me more than Ubuntu official support.
-Den

[Wang Solutions]

I had a resolution issue in Ubuntu 8.10 and ran a command very similar to the second one listed and it worked fine, so it should be fine to run it under 8.10. But before you do that, can we establish one thing? If you boot into Windows, is the resolution etc normal? We should rule out a hardware issue first.

[den160593]

Yes, Windows XP works perfectly. So should i give it a go? Could anything go wrong from that?

[den160593]

Can anyone help? I ran the script, but nothing happened. No change occured. Can I reset Ubuntu via the LiveCD or something?

[Vajras]

i had a dual monitor setup with a Matrox agp card, and ubuntu and XP

so.. (ignore the matrox stuff) and try here for a bunch of other necessary info

http://forum.tuxx-home.at/

also

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=221174

the tuxx forum postings were a real education and helped completely solve my prob

the ubuntu fora less so

HTH

[den160593]

Hey thanks, it still isn't fixed :( http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1077178 that's the thread I'm in.

My most recent advice was to use apt-get and get envyng-core. However it didn't work (see thread for more details). It fails at au.archive.ubuntu.com

Is there any other way for me to get this fixed? Please, I'm really desperate...

[yoda]

Does sound like a network connectivity issue...

Run the following command:   ping -c 5 au.archive.ubuntu.com

If it comes back with something ending something like shown below, the connection is fine:

--- au.archive.ubuntu.com ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 received, 0% packet loss, time 4018ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 375.062/378.731/382.288/3.001 ms

[den160593]

Hi,

This is what I got:

Code Select Expand

ping -c 5au.archive.ubuntu.com
ping: unknown host au.archive.ubuntu.com

Which is weird... perhaps could i download that package from another source? Or if you think theres a different solution to my problem

[Wang Solutions]

Do you use a proxy server to access the internet normally? If so, you might need to put those settings in.

Alternatively, could you just reinstall Ubuntu? (Would you lose anything vital if you did?)

[den160593]

Do you use a proxy server to access the internet normally? If so, you might need to put those settings in.

Alternatively, could you just reinstall Ubuntu? (Would you lose anything vital if you did?)

No i wouldn't. What would be the best way of doing that? I already had partitions set up, could I reinstall to those same partitions - like exactly the same position as it is in right now? Any good guides?

[yoda]

Yes, you could try getting the package from another source.  

But perhaps the problems are DNS related as it cannot find the host.  To test that, what happens if you run the following (which does the same thing as before but without looking up the host):

ping -c 5  91.189.88.46

[Wang Solutions]

You should be able to just reinstall to the same partition by selecting that partition when prompted. But if you have plenty of disk space you could instead install again into a completely new partition and then have two instances of Ubuntu to choose from when booting. That will give you some time to sort out the display issue on the current installation (or you could delete it once it you get the new one working).

[den160593]

Ok with Yoda's suggestion I get the following:

Network is unreachable

Wang, I don't have enough disk-space to install 2 partitions of Ubuntu, how would be the best way to uninstall it. (Or is it possible to install a fresh graphics driver from the LiveCD?

Thanks
-Den

[den160593]

Any ideas?

[Wang Solutions]

When you are doing these network traces, are you in Windows or Ubuntu?

I would think it possible to just reinstall Ubuntu into the existing partition over the top of it without first uninstalling but it is not something I have ever had to do.