my Ubuntu 9.04 Was working perfectly and this morning I shut down the computer, moved it across the room, plugged it back in and when it boots up all I get are black and white checkerd squares.

Bios is working fine, It goes to the Ubuntu boot up window, the little orange line at the bottom goes progressivly right to the end, then when it should start it turns to black and white checkered squares.

I have tried-
Turning it off and on (about 100 times)
A different power cord
removing all unecessary cards in the computer
Unplugging computer for ten minutes, unplugging every single cable, removing video cards etc and plugging it all back in (exactly the same response)
Booting it up off the ubuntu os system disk, (it gets to the point where you can choose to reinstall os, but I dont want to do that because I will loose HD data.
I have booted it into grub and tried recovery mode but when it gets to the terminal I dont know what to do

OS...

"Booting it off..."; that is you tried to boot Ubuntu 9.04 as a live-cd without success.

Have you removed and re-installed your RAM sticks, perhaps running memtest as you replace each to see that all function?

How do I do a mem test?

In the grub menu itself there is an option for mem test. Just select that and press enter.

actually it has booted off the live cd, in the "try ubuntu with no change to your computer mode"

I now have access to the harddrive so Im going to spend the next 3 hours copying all the stuff off it just in case it never boots again.

In between the Ubuntu boot up window and ubuntu actually launching it came up with black and white checkered squares, but only for a second, then it went to normal ubuntu desktop mode (but from the live disk)

Sounds like something got bumped when you moved it—checking all the connections as you've done was a good idea. The point at which the error occurs seems to be when the X server (the thing that provides the GUI) tries to start. Because of that, you might want to double check how your graphics card is seated.

Since the system doesn't plop you down at a command-line shell, it seems that X doesn't know about the problem; again a hint that something is wrong at the hardware level. When you get the black-and-white checkered squares, what happens when you press Ctl+Alt+Bksp? (This resets the X server.)

My previous post was made under the assumption that you were booting off the hard drive, but it shouldn't make a difference really.

Excellent idea, you should have done this earlier. USB drives rock.

Don't worry too much about temporary transitions. If the live CD shows that Ubuntu is working on your system, it will work after installation too.

[QUOTE=michapma;3591309]My previous post was made under the assumption that you were booting off the hard drive, but it shouldn't make a difference really.


The first post was made as I was attempting to boot off the hard drive. I tried the live cd as an attempt to recover data.

So now as the Live cd is working properly it appears that the problem must be in the hard disk. I did install a whole pile of programs yesterday afternoon from ad remove software, a software clash must have ocurred on shutdown/ restart.

A software clash would have taken immediate effect upon installation of the packages, but it might have been something you wouldn't notice until restarting.

Back up your data, and when you get back to fixing the system, try removing some of the programs added yesterday. Were any of them proprietary? Did you install for instance graphics card drivers?

ahh yes I attempted many times to install the grachics drivers for an ati radeon 9600 graphics driver, however it would unpackage but never install properly.

Maybe this has somehow become the problem.

For next time and just in case...

I note that the checkerboard pattern appeared briefly as you achieved a live boot of Ubuntu. You might disconnect any HDD, boot Ubuntu live and see if the pattern reoccurs. If you have more than one drive, try them all. Thereby you check the bad software hypothesis and if there is a checkerboard, might go on look to your graphics card or memory for the problem. Did you try to stop and restart the X window manager as suggested and what happened?

You can download the SystemRescueCD, PartedMagic, or some other rescue and manipulation live-cd to have at hand for the next time and for their copy of among other tools, memtest. Unless the problem disappears, I would at some point run a test of each RAM with memtest.

It might also be an idea to swap your graphics card if you can, and try with Ubuntu live again. Of course, if the checkerboard pattern does not present itself, look to the HDD and its installation.


http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

http://partedmagic.com/

I managed to back up the hard disk data, now im reinstalling ubuntu

I think I corrupted the ati drivers in the terminal, or something. I could get access to the hard disk but couldnt delete or uninstall anything as I was running from the boot cd.

Which raises the question-

WHY ARE THE ATI RADEON 9600 DRIVERS NOT WORKING FOR VERSION 9.04, WHEN i KNOW THEY WHERE WORKING FINE FOR THE PREVIOUS VERSION!

CAN SOME ONE TELL ME OR FIX IT SO I CAN USE THEM.

Google says:

http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubu...allation_Guide

Looks good.