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I have gone through countless threads on the following error and none have helped.

 Your screen, graphics card, and input device settings could not be detected
 correctly. You will need to configure these yourself.

I have tried countless things but nothing works. This pops up every time I reboot. The computer was running fine then all of a sudden it crashed and I got this error.

I can enter recovery mode, mount the system read/write, go to the root shell, connect to the internet and run apt-get.

As said above, I have already tried lots of solution from other forums, what I decided now is to reinstall all packages related to this.

How can I make a list of thing to reinstall with apt-get? Like everything related to the "screen, graphics card, and input device settings" part.

Or could I even re-install completely all system files (preserving my programs) from this command line?

As alternative, I'd install a different Ubuntu version (also from recovery mode). I have space in the HDD.

jordan
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  • You can get a list of packages that were upgraded by looking at /var/log/apt/history.log* and/or /var/log/dpkg.log*. They contain information like the date and hour, so you should make your list based on that. With such list, it will become easier for people to help you. – admirabilis Nov 03 '13 at 10:52
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    Did you try rebooting from a different kernel? Sometimes this helps. – landroni Feb 26 '14 at 07:28
  • dpkg -l will list the installed packages. – Emmanuel Apr 29 '14 at 17:43
  • Have you installed video drivers outside apt-get? I mean, have you downloaded and installed propietary drivers from nvidia or ati or any other manufacturer? – YoMismo May 21 '15 at 06:49
  • The original poster hasn't provided any information that I can see. First. What video card did they have? What driver was running it? Is it AMD? Were they using the free or non free driver? What did they mean by 'upgrade'? Which ubuntu version did they start with, and which did they upgrade to? is it LTS or the 6 month releases? Without providing this information, it's not surprising the poster never found any solutions. Without that information it's hard to understand why this would be bumped to the home page since it won't contain many useful answers. – Lizardx Dec 28 '16 at 19:11

3 Answers3

1

You may try installing / reinstalling your Ubuntu desktop with removing all the nvidia / ati drivers:

sudo apt-get purge nvidia-* //or ati if you have an ati graphic card
sudo rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
sudo apt-get install --reinstall xserver-xorg-video-nouveau
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
sudo reboot
Miloš
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0

If you did install some binary drivers for your graphics card, I'd start by uninstalling those. Often Xorg (and the kernel) change how such drivers work, and vendors just lag way behind (or just don't update the drivers for older cards that don't interest them anymore).

Other than looking for other non-disttribution software (disable non-distribution repositories, or make sure they are up to date for the new version of the distribution), you'd need a understanding of what is going on, and debug it yourself. Checking configuration file changes, checking if there is leftover cruft (old packages that aren't current anymore), see if there are unfullfilled dependencies somewhere (very unlikely, but better rule it out). Then carefully roll back suspect packages.

vonbrand
  • 18,253
0

Your going to be hard press to do much more then attempting to fix the computer from the recovery console. Not because it "can't" be done but because it's would be really hard to do.

You can try dpkg-reconfigure -a and that should fix any config file related things that could be fixed by re-installing packages. However that might not fix your issue.

Your error sounds like Xorg related stuff. Can you run X :1 from the recovery console?

If not then try

rm /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Be aware that will erase your current config. There shouldn't be much there, but if there is you might want to move it instead of removing it.

If all else fails you can reinstall ubuntu from CD (or such) and just not format the drive containing you home partition (even if it is /). That should get you up and running.

Finally it's time for me to scream Backups, Backups, Backups! As that would be a lot eaiser (restoring from backup), then this.

coteyr
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