My girlfriend and I both run Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Herron. her computer, while being older, still is run by Ubuntu quite well.. well, till recently. She said that it started not completely booting. What happens is that the computer boots until the password box is supposed to appear. the screen goes black and that is all it will do. I completely reinstalled the operating system thinking a file had been corrupted and a fresh install would be the easy solution. It went great. It booted well from a fresh install. HOWEVER, upon applying the updates, the computer reverted back to it's original behavior of not completely booting. If others have had this issue, please refer me to that thread or let me know what I should do, please. Thank you in advance for any help this community might have.

Scott Wright

Because of this, I am slightly scared to update mine (even tho my computer is brand new).

You didn't mention it so I assume you are not getting any GRUB errors in text...like GRUB error 15..

Any idea what the updates exactly... erm... well... updated?

It sounds like you have the classic "downloaded an updated kernel, but did not get matching video drivers" problem that regularly afflicts people who upgrade from online repositories.

I. e. you -may- (there could be many other things wrong as well) have gotten a new kernel version during the update, but the video drivers you use (especially if you have a Nvidia based graphics card) are still the old ones, for the old kernel.

You need to have matching video driver versions and kernel drivers versions... otherwise you might get this "partial boot" behaviour.

...and whatever happens the systems logs (and Xorg log) should provide you with details like error messages. Posting those may help those here help you faster and more efficiently.

Thank you for your kind help. No, there weren't any Xorg errors or GRUB errors. however, it is odd that the GRUB 3...2...1...0 countdown screen is blinking...

The updates, since it was a fresh install, were the 375 updates that were available and a proprietary video driver for NVIDIA.... I run an older model 64 card... I reinstalled, accepted the 375 updates, and refused the recommended proprietary video driver... That solved everything. Guess that goes to show that what is recommended isnt always useful.

any helpful thoughts on the whole blinking countdown screen thing would be appreciated. Thanks again.

Scott Wright

blinking screen is usually an X config problem, wait a bit and you should get a text mode login prompt
if you get a text-mode login promp and you have the .run file for the nvidia driver (can be accessed from nvidia's site) http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
you can run the installer for the nvidia driver after logging by sudo driverfile.run and following the instructions