Something strange happened to me. My window manager is broken. I'm running Cinnamon. I have the screen and I can click on some of the icons, but the window borders are gone, I cannot move a window (although I can resize most of them), and the toolbar menu (File, Edit, View. History, Bookmarks ...) does not work. I can right click on the desktop to start a terminal window, and I can launch Firefox from there, which is how I am writing this.

Possibly related, I tried to boot from the Mint 17 and Mint 17.1 disks to upgrade. No go, they start but hang up before I even get to the install menu. I also tried the recovery mode. Fsck found no errors and dpkg likewise found nothing to repair.

I don't see anything unusual in dmesg or in Xorg.0.log, but syslog does have an error:

Unable to find desktop file 'Nemo.desktop'

Similar entry lists gnome-Nemo.desktop. If this is the problem, can I recreate them?

I can dual boot to Windows 7 and it still works, but I hate Windoze, and just keep it for emergencies.

I would appreciate any suggestion you care to make.

In order to get your Mint 17.1 disc to boot, have you disabled Secureboot in the computers boot configuration?

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I have not ... but I did not have to do that when I installed Mint 16 about a year ago. Is that a new requirement? I thought Ubuntu paid the fee to get registered in UEFI, and Mint is based on Ubuntu. In any case, I went to my BIOS, but I could not find an entry to disable UEFI.

More info: I can use CTRL-ALT-F1 to break out to the CLI, but CTRL-ALT-F8 does not get me back. Just a blank screen, but something is still running, because I can do CTRL_ALT-F1 to get back to the CLI and init 6 from there to reboot.

ps says that 'nemo -n' is running. What part of Mint puts the Minimize, Maximize, and Exit buttons at the corners? It seems to me that is what is not working right.

Multiple problems. First, in /home/toad/.config/cinnamon-session/saved-session were two files which were not being read properly. Deleting them then restarting solved the problem with the window manager.

The problem with booting from a Linux mint install disk was removed by unplugging my external monitor and hard drive. I don't know for sure which was the culprit, but I suspect the monitor, which is a 24 incher, and may have been giving the graphics drive conniptions.

Thanks for looking.

Try Ctrl+Alt+F7