Can't login into ubuntu anymore

Question

Just today Ubuntu Lucid (10.04) decided to not work. It just gets stuck in this screen:

It looks like it's loading something but it's just stuck there. I can't login.

I've tried numerous solutions like: sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg (nothing happens when I enter this command btw) but none of them works. I've also tried the recovery menu failsafeX option and it doesn't do anything either.

Answer 1

If disk is still active you may be in the middle of a disk check (fsck). I assume you let it run for a half hour or so before shutting it off...?

Try loading a live CD and see if that sticks too. If so think hardware failure. IF it boots ok then copy your data out to safe place before that goes away. Then poke around to your heart's content. And please check to see if anything out of the ordinary is listed in the boot messages. (dmesg) Once you've exhausted the "recovery" option you might just want to re-install. My experience with 5 currently active 10.4 installations is that they have been pretty stable so I would just try again.

Power failures or excessive heat are common reasons for this sort of abrupt work stoppage so you might want to think if either of those areas needs attention.

Answer 2

You should disable the ubuntu boot splash to take a look at the bootup messages. Maybe they can already tell you what's going wrong.

If that doesn't work, boot up a livecd and check the log files in /var/log (maybe dmesg will tell you more?) - Note: You have to mount the right partition first.

What does /var/log/Xorg.0.log say?