Alan, just thought I'd get back to you, I had a crack at this again today and found that <a href="http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=963853">many others</a> have had the same problem. I finally go back to the Gnome Desktop but the upgrade has removed Open Office, Firefox, Network Manger, Compiz Fusion etc. etc. I started reinstalling packages and finally tried to get Compiz Fusion going again so I installed xorg-driver-fglrx for my ATI Radeon X600 video card. This just caused another freeze on re-boot so I removed the driver. I have decide to do a fresh install of 8.04.1 and steer clear of 8.10 for the time being as this has been the most catastrophic upgrade I've ever seen and I will not be upgrading any of my other machines. Cheers George <div class="gmail_quote">2008/10/31 Alan Pope <<a href="mailto:alan@popey.com">alan@popey.com</a>> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> 2008/10/31 George MacLeod <<a href="mailto:bhaltair@gmail.com">bhaltair@gmail.com</a>>: <div class="Ih2E3d">> I have been using Ubuntu since 5.04 and have never had a major problem until > now. I have upgrade before via CD and via the network and always with only > minor issue, if any, until now. I ran the network upgrade as before to go > from 8.04 to 8.10 and everything went as it had in the past, until the final > stage when I was asked to OK the removal of obsolete packages. I thought > nothing of it as this is normal, but alarm bells stated ringing when I saw > Firefox, Evolution, compiz and Xorg being removed, but the process had > already started. > > I then clicked restart at the end and that's when I realised all was not > well </div>This was possibly not wise. For future reference if you have a situation where the system is in a dodgy state, a restart is probably not the best course of action at that point. <div class="Ih2E3d"> > I've tried to reboot several times with the same result and booting into > recovery mode just leaves me hanging at a terminal prompt. > </div>A logon prompt? If so can you logon okay? <div class="Ih2E3d"> > Needless to say I will not be upgrading any of my other machines until I can > get this fixed. </div>Conversely I have upgraded 5 machines and not had this kind of issue. <div class="Ih2E3d"> > My PC is a Dell Dimension Dual boot with XP on a corporate LAN. > </div>What's the package history on the machine? Have you ever used automatix or something similar to install packages? What do you have in /etc/apt/sources.list and any files in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ ? Is the "ubuntu-desktop" package still installed (assuming you can get logged in), type this:- dpkg -l ubuntu-desktop (that's a lower case L). Cheers, Al. -- <a href="mailto:ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com">ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com</a> <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk" target="_blank">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk</a> <a href="https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/" target="_blank">https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/</a> </blockquote></div>