HI all,a total linux newbie here,so please bear with me.I updated my system today using the update manager and downloaded all the needed packages.After the completion of installation I was told to restart the system.I rebooted the system and now I can't log in to my system.The system hangs with a blank screen with a little 'X' in the middle of the screen.At this point I can't use the keyboard or the mouse as the system is totally unresponsive (can't use ctrl+alt+backspace or alt+F1 or alt+F2).
I had installed the system yesterday and had installed ATI DRIVERS (ati-driver-installer-9-3-x86.x86_64.run) downloaded from the ati/amd site successfully.I didn't installed the system default ati proprietary FGLRX graphics driver as there was some unknown problem due to which I wasn't able to download it through the default method.After the installation all the effects were active like compiz,etc.The output of fglrxinfo and glxinfo | grep direct were all positive,that is,my video card was detected and direct rendering was also on.

UPDATE:

After booting into the recovery mode and using xfix I am able to log back into my system but now no desktop effect is active.The output of fglrxinfo is

display: :0.0 screen: 0
OpenGL vendor string: DRI R300 Project
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI R300 20060815 x86/MMX/SSE2 NO-TCL
OpenGL version string: 1.3 Mesa 7.2

while the output of glxinfo | grep direct is

direct rendering: No (If you want to find out why, try setting LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose).

MY SYSTEM SPECS ARE
INTEL DUAL CORE 2.8
TRANSCEND DDR1 512MB
EMBEDDED MOTHER BOARD CARD :ATI X200
UBUNTU 8.10 DESKTOP EDITION.

Please do let me know if you need anything else.
(its 3:15 am here,time to go to sleep,please don't get offended if I don't reply promptly,but would make sure to check up and reply to you guys as soon as I can)

THANK YOU ALL.

Did the update include a new version Kernel? IIRC, when you upgrade the Kernel with drivers installed for ATI or nVidia systems, you need to reinstall the drivers. Try that and let us know if it works.

Cheers

Hi,thank you for replying.One last question.Yes the update included new version of kernel.
Do I have to uninstall the driver that I had installed previously,something like in windows where if you are going to install or reinstall the driver you have to uninstall the driver that you have installed previously.Hoping to hear from you soon.Thank you once again for replying

UPDATE:
I took the risk of installing the ati drivers without uninstalling the previously installed one.The result,well now everything is A-OK.All the desktop effects are back.Thank you for your help and time dragonslayer48dx.Hope this thread helps someone.

Sorry I wasn't available to answer your question promptly. As you've already learned, some things are actually easier in Linux than with Windows.

Thank you for letting us know you have your system running again.

Cheers