I recently upgraded a desktop to the newest release of Ubuntu. I upgraded through a usb. At the very end of the update, I received an error message regarding an inability to unmount certain drives (or something to that effect). I was assured that this would not affect the upgrade, and that only certain settings would not be imported from Ubuntu 10.04. I suspect this is where my problems began.
It appeared from starting Ubuntu initially that all drivers were deleted. Checking Additional Drivers has confirmed this. None are listed. That means network, mouse, and display related drivers are all kaput. Through blind luck I managed to get the mouse working.
But two problems persist:
1. Network: Despite the fact that the connection to the desktop is wired, Ubuntu is not detecting any incoming network connections. This has been a major road block in any fix as I cannot simply download driver updates.
2. Monitor/Display: The resolution is frozen at 640x480. The monitor is listed simply in Display as Unknown. Ominous.
This is a parents desktop that I upgraded per their request. Prior to that it hadn't gone through any updates in a year or so. I know very little about this desktop. I haven't used any Linux build in several years, but I'm not totally computer illiterate, and I have a basic understanding of the Terminal. If anyone has any suggestions as to where I could even begin to fix any of these problems, that would be greatly appreciated.

Ubuntu updates are a schmozzle. I stopped using it years ago - many years ago.
Best idea might be to move /home off to a separate partition, and do a fresh install of your latest Ubuntu. Specify the same user(s) and password(s) and allow the installer to import those users to the new system.
Works well. Do this every upgrade - I like to keep two system partitions and flip-flop between them so I can roll-back by simply re-booting.

Edit: - try looking at this for ideas on how to do the /home.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks for the tip on the upgrades, I'll try it out. Thank you very much for the reply!

Thanks! It worked perfectly!