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When I boot I get to the login screen fine, and then after login I get a screen with my wallpaper and mouse cursor, but no menu, no dash, ctr + alt + T does nothing, clicking the mouse does nothing. I've tried to get a text prompt using ctrl + alt + F1 - F6, but they take me to a completely blank screen with no prompt, ctrl + alt + F7 takes me back to my wallpaper and cursor. All the other solutions posted need me to be in a terminal window, but I can't get into one.

I upgraded from 14.10 when this happened - the upgrade seemed to go ahead like normal. This machine originally had 10.04 on it, but has been upgraded every 6 months with no issues .... until now!

I can get into recovery mode, but don't really know what to do to fix it from there.

My machine is an ASUS laptop with a radeon HD6320 graphics and an AMD brazos E450 processor.

I have created a bootable dvd of 15.04 and that works fine!

my .xsession-errors file has some odd entries - does anyone know what they mean?

openConnection: connect: No such file or directory cannot connect to brltty at :0
upstart: upstart-event-bridge main process (1552) terminated with status 1
upstart: upstart-event-bridge main process ended, respawning
upstart: upstart-event-bridge main process (1560) terminated with status 1
upstart: upstart-event-bridge main process ended, respawning
upstart: upstart-event-bridge main process (1568) terminated with status 1
upstart: upstart-event-bridge main process ended, respawning
upstart: upstart-event-bridge main process (1589) terminated with status 1
upstart: upstart-event-bridge main process ended, respawning
upstart: upstart-event-bridge main process (1590) terminated with status 1
upstart: upstart-event-bridge main process ended, respawning
upstart: upstart-event-bridge main process (1592) terminated with status 1
upstart: upstart-event-bridge main process ended, respawning
upstart: upstart-event-bridge main process (1593) terminated with status 1
upstart: upstart-event-bridge main process ended, respawning
upstart: upstart-event-bridge main process (1596) terminated with status 1
upstart: upstart-event-bridge main process ended, respawning
upstart: upstart-event-bridge main process (1635) terminated with status 1
upstart: upstart-event-bridge main process ended, respawning
upstart: upstart-event-bridge main process (1636) terminated with status 1
upstart: upstart-event-bridge main process ended, respawning
upstart: upstart-event-bridge main process (1637) terminated with status 1
upstart: upstart-event-bridge respawning too fast, stopped
upstart: update-notifier-crash (/var/crash/_sbin_upstart.119.crash) main process (1591) terminated with status 1
Xsession: X session started for benj at Fri May  1 22:06:50 BST 2015
localuser:benj being added to access control list
/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc: 8: [: x: unexpected operator
openConnection: connect: No such file or directory
cannot connect to brltty at :0
Xsession: X session started for root at Fri May  1 22:25:26 BST 2015
localuser:root being added to access control list
openConnection: connect: No such file or directory
cannot connect to brltty at :0
/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc: 8: [: x: unexpected operator
benj
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  • Did you try `mount -o remount,rw / && dkms autoinstall` in the root console of the recovery mode? – Kalle Richter Apr 27 '15 at 20:31
  • Hi @KarlRichter thank you very much for your reply. CTRL + ALT + F1 - now works and I can log into the tty from there, and then startx brings me into a unity window. But the normal graphical login still has the same symptoms - ie just a moveable cursor and background. Any ideas? :-) – benj May 01 '15 at 13:47
  • Did you run `sudo dkms autoinstall`? – Kalle Richter May 01 '15 at 15:54
  • Yes. Now can get a tty but no graphical interface. – benj May 01 '15 at 17:47
  • Anyone able to help? – benj May 09 '15 at 20:06
  • Have you installed necessary drivers for your graphics card? – Karthik May 22 '15 at 10:03
  • @benj, it seems you have a syntax error in `/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc`. Mine is this one: http://paste.ubuntu.com/11378411/ Could you check if you have differences? – Andrea Lazzarotto May 26 '15 at 21:56
  • I have the same issue with `upstart-event-bridge` after updating the kernel from 3.19.0-15 to 3.19.0-21 (using the Update Manager app). – Anero Jun 16 '15 at 22:00
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    possible duplicate of [Unity doesn't load, no Launcher, no Dash appears](http://askubuntu.com/questions/17381/unity-doesnt-load-no-launcher-no-dash-appears) – Eric Carvalho Aug 26 '15 at 17:22
  • Solutions from [Unity doesn't load, no Launcher, no Dash appears](http://askubuntu.com/questions/17381/unity-doesnt-load-no-launcher-no-dash-appears) worked for me. – Tim Jan 22 '16 at 10:23

3 Answers3

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This is a long shot but I ran into the same issue as you and it took me an hour of trial and error to fix it. I haven't figured out why, but the unity settings are probably messed up.

You need to start the compiz config settings tool. I couldn't figure out how to start it from command line so I started up a cinnamon session where I could start the settings tool. In the settings tool I, quite frankly, messed around a bit. Checked and unchecked the OpenGL plugin and the unity plugin. I think the latter is probably what made it work, since it yelled back at me with warnings and conflicts.

After this. I logged out and logged back in again and unity was back.

Jens Erat
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Leonard Broman
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  • wow this worked for me! to run compiz config settings from terminal: 1. Ctrl+Alt+T (to open up terminal) 2. then type 'ccsm' – David Lam Oct 03 '15 at 04:28
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I had the same problem, and all I had to do was:

sudo apt-get install unity && unity

and my desktop immediately fixed itself.

Eric Carvalho
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v4gil
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0

Had the same issues here, but it didn't happen after an upgrade. I shut the laptop down in the morning and all of a sudden had no window decorations, no dash and no menu bar after booting it up tonight.

Following Leonard Broman's suggestion, I opened CompizConfig (fortunately right-clicking the blank desktop still gave me a context menu with the Open terminal option). Turns out all plugins (Composite, OpenGL, Unity Plugin, Desktop Wall, Grid, ...) where somehow disabled... I simply enabled them back and got the graphical user interface right again.

Thiago Mael de Castro
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