Ubuntu keeps screwing up and recovery mode won't work

Veraster

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I have Ubuntu dual booting on my desktop with Windows 7. One day, Ubuntu screwed up. When I selected to start it at the grub boot menu, it only went to the console and gnome wouldn't start. Typing "startx" only made it go to a blank screen.

So I decided to just uninstall Ubuntu and grub completely since they've been working on it for 7 years and it's still unstable on anything I try to install it on. When I did that, grub refused to let Windows boot. I decided the only way to fix that would be to give Ubuntu another chance and reinstall it.

After reinstalling Ubuntu and installing drivers, I restarted to finish installing updates. Well guess what? A screen came up saying that the system is running in low graphics mode. There are four options which are:

  • Run in low graphics mode for just one session
  • Reconfigure graphics
  • troubleshoot error
  • exit to console login
If I select "run in low graphics mode", it goes to a blank screen and doesn't do anything else until I pull the power plug.
If I select "reconfigure graphics", it doesn't do anything. The ok button press animation runs when I press the ok button but nothing else.
If I select "troubleshoot error", it does the same as above
If I select "exit to console login", it just kicks me out to that damn console. Typing "startx" just freezes the system on a blank screen and I have to pull the plug.

When I choose to boot Ubuntu in recovery mode, there are a lot of hopeful looking options. When I select any of them, a message comes up saying "Continuing will remount your filesystem in read/write mode and mount any other filesystem defined in etc/fstab.
Do you wish to continue?

If I select yes, a console type thing will show up at the bottom. It will say "/dev/sda2: clean, 192210/1289280 files, 1108742/5156864 blocks"
and do nothing else until I pull the power plug.

Does anyone know how I can either fix this and make Ubuntu work normally or get rid of grub and Ubuntu completely so that it boots directly into Windows without me having to choose to start Windows manually?
 
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Have you installed the AMD proprietary drivers for your video card?
I seriously have never been able to make those work correctly. I got so fed up with them I sold my 7950 and bought this GTX 680.
 
Yes I had the AMD drivers installed for my video card. They worked really well for me for a while but as of today, they refuse to work at all no matter what. I'd rather use Windows all the time than buy a $400 video card though.
 
Yes I had the AMD drivers installed for my video card. They worked really well for me for a while but as of today, they refuse to work at all no matter what. I'd rather use Windows all the time than buy a $400 video card though.

Have you investigated the possibility of running either a virtualised Linux install on top of Windows? OR if you don't want the overhead of a full VM, maybe cygwin would satisfy you nix needs?
 
I have Ubuntu dual booting on my desktop with Windows 7. One day, Ubuntu screwed up. When I selected to start it at the grub boot menu, it only went to the console and gnome wouldn't start. Typing "startx" only made it go to a blank screen.

So I decided to just uninstall Ubuntu and grub completely since they've been working on it for 7 years and it's still unstable on anything I try to install it on. When I did that, grub refused to let Windows boot. I decided the only way to fix that would be to give Ubuntu another chance and reinstall it.

After reinstalling Ubuntu and installing drivers, I restarted to finish installing updates. Well guess what? A screen came up saying that the system is running in low graphics mode. There are four options which are:

  • Run in low graphics mode for just one session
  • Reconfigure graphics
  • troubleshoot error
  • exit to console login
If I select "run in low graphics mode", it goes to a blank screen and doesn't do anything else until I pull the power plug.
If I select "reconfigure graphics", it doesn't do anything. The ok button press animation runs when I press the ok button but nothing else.
If I select "troubleshoot error", it does the same as above
If I select "exit to console login", it just kicks me out to that damn console. Typing "startx" just freezes the system on a blank screen and I have to pull the plug.

When I choose to boot Ubuntu in recovery mode, there are a lot of hopeful looking options. When I select any of them, a message comes up saying "Continuing will remount your filesystem in read/write mode and mount any other filesystem defined in etc/fstab.
Do you wish to continue?

If I select yes, a console type thing will show up at the bottom. It will say "/dev/sda2: clean, 192210/1289280 files, 1108742/5156864 blocks"
and do nothing else until I pull the power plug.

Does anyone know how I can either fix this and make Ubuntu work normally or get rid of grub and Ubuntu completely so that it boots directly into Windows without me having to choose to start Windows manually?

I had a similar problem with Ubuntu dual-booted with Windows XP. I'm not 100% sure this would work for you, but here's what I did (hope it helps you):

1. Delete the Ubuntu partion, and get rid of Grub.

2. Either use a recovery disk or an original install disk of your Windows 7 version. When installed, Grub deletes and replaces the original Windows bootloader, so if you remove Grub, nothing is left on the drive to point it in the direction of Windows. Use whatever disk you found and try to access a repair function. If you can, try to rewrite the master boot record (the command for XP was "fixmbr").

3. If this works you're in the clear. The only other thing you may want/have to do is use a partition editor to make the Windows partition max size again. But if you really want to reinstall Ubuntu (and I don't recommend dual-booting it, ever), you can just use the remaining empty space on your drive to reinstall Ubuntu.

Best of luck to you.
 
Do you recall doing any updates recently in Ubuntu? If you grabbed a new kernel, it could have been untested with AMD/ATI graphics card drivers, which is the case 99% of the time since AMD/ATI don't take the time to test updated drivers with certain kernels.
 
Do you recall doing any updates recently in Ubuntu? If you grabbed a new kernel, it could have been untested with AMD/ATI graphics card drivers, which is the case 99% of the time since AMD/ATI don't take the time to test updated drivers with certain kernels.
It was because of a new ATI driver. It was ATI's first driver release where everything finally worked properly in Linux including the multi monitor setup. The only problem is that it makes Ubuntu randomly stop working.

I temporarily gave up on Ubuntu and now use Windows as my main OS. I'll give Ubuntu another chance in a year or two after both Canocial and ATI have had time to fix stuff.
 
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It was because of a new ATI driver. It was ATI's first driver release where everything finally worked properly in Linux including the multi monitor setup. The only problem is that it makes Ubuntu randomly stop working.

I temporarily gave up on Ubuntu and now use Windows as my main OS. I'll give Ubuntu another chance in a year or two after both Canocial and ATI have had time to fix stuff.

You mean, after ATI has had time to fix stuff. ATI is known to be problematic on Linux.
 
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