Ubuntu Hardy was operating smoothly while browsing on Internet when a pop-up (?) ad for a registry repair program unexpectedly came up. An immediate effort to remove or close this was followed by a lock-up. The system boots and then freezes. Thus far, unable to repair the system (dual boot with XP which is able to run without trouble.) Advice greatly appreciated.

You didn't say anything about fsck. When the system boots do you get any messages about needing to run fsck?

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Steve Stites

Thanks for your query about my post. Here is part 2. I used the Ubuntu option of changing from gnome/KDE to KDE4 (which I am really unfamiliar with) and discovered that the file for the desk top was completely empty.It seems that that should explain why I now seem to go through the boot process and then get a perfectly blank screen except for the regular background--there is nothing to click on. I have no idea how I might create and install the needed shortcuts or if there is some way to do a restore from a disk, etc. What ever I encountered seems to be a real nasty!

I am unsure where in the boot process you are failing. Are you getting a login screen? If so do you log in and then get the blank screen? If that is where you are then my fsck question is irrelevant.

I think that at this point the best thing to do is to go back to whatever you were using before you tried to install KDE 4. Somewhere on your login screen you will find the option as to which desktop to log into. See if you can log into what you used to use.

Once you get a usable desktop then you can try to fix KDE 4. Whenever you get into the position to do a little work see if these directories exist:

/home/user/.kde
/home/user/Desktop
/etc/kde3
/etc/kde4

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Steve Stites