Ubuntu 8.10 installation partly failed, what now?

[Anne Vanhoestenberghe]

Hello,

I have been using fedora for years now but I had never installed any linux
OS.  I tried installing ubuntu 8.10 from a cd as dual boot with windows XP
on an old pc.  At first it seemed that all was fine but something must
have gone wrong and unnoticed.  Ubuntu starts OK but quite a few things do
not work.  So far what I have noticed is:
If I open a terminal I only get a white window, with NOTHING, I mean
nothing, not frame, no prompt, just a big white rectangle.  So impossible
to use the command line.
There is always a little square around the cursor that fails to refresh,
so after a while my screen is doted with frozen little squares, this sorts
itself if I close all applications, wait for about 5 minutes doing nothing
then click on the empty desktop.
I cannot move nor resize the windows and the only way to close them is
Ctrl-Q.  As if the bar at the top of the window was not working properly.
During the start-up sequence, I get a funny screen for a few seconds, full
of fuzzy blurred lines and dots.  Then it goes back to the normal start up
screen.

Now, if I was to use the PC more I could find more issues, but this is not
the point.  Since I cannot use the command line the chances of sorting
this from within ubuntu seem limited.  So what can I do?  I thought about
re-installing it (perhaps reinstall kubuntu 8.10 instead).  But how can I
do this cleanly?  I do not have the windows cd and must keep windows as it
runs some windows only programs that I need every so often for work.
Uninstalling ubuntu scares me as I worry about loosing grub and failing to
boot anything at all afterwards.  Anybody has a simple plan?  I am fairly
familiar with basic commands and have been a fedora user (that includes
installing all subsequent programs) for more than 10 years now.  I will
try to answer all your questions to clarify the nature of the problem if
this help, I just did not know what more to say here.

Many thanks for any help you may be able to offer.

Best regards

anne



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anne Vanhoest

Implanted Devices Group

Medical Physics and Bioengineering Department
Malet Place Engineering Building
UCL

Gower Street
WC1E 6BT London

phone: 020 7679 0296 (internal: 30296)
fax: 020 7679 0255