cursor, wallpaper and other functions disabled

[Colin Law]

On 29 December 2014 at 01:55, Thomas Blasejewicz <thomas at s7.dion.ne.jp> wrote:
>
> On 2014/12/28 18:30, Colin Law wrote:
>>
>> On 28 December 2014 at 00:47, Thomas Blasejewicz <thomas at s7.dion.ne.jp>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On 2014/12/27 17:47, Colin Law wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On 27 December 2014 at 04:37, Thomas Blasejewicz <thomas at s7.dion.ne.jp>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> ...
>>>>> Anway
>>>>> AFTER I created the new user and logged off -> logged in again ...
>>>>> SOMETIMES
>>>>> I get the usual screen, mouse pointer etc.
>>>>> But only sometimes.
>>>>> At other times (I have not had much time to play with this thing; the
>>>>> machine is at home .. I am at work ..) I get something that looks like
>>>>> at
>>>>> least 500 screens are superimposed on each other ...
>>>>
>>>> It might be worth checking by booting off a live image and 'Trying
>>>> Ubuntu' that it still runs ok, to eliminate hardware issues.
>>>>
>>>> Colin
>>>>
>>> "Try ubuntu" from live CD causes no problems I can see.
>>>
>>> When I log out and then log in again, sometimes things improve,
>>> but each time (100%) I restart the computer, everything is back to a
>>> state,
>>> where a million things do not work.
>>>
>>> Anything else I could try?
>>
>> Have a look in /var/log/syslog and ~/.xsession_errors.
>>
>> Colin
>>
> The file "syslog" is empty.

What?  /var/log/syslog is empty?  I find that difficult to understand.
If correct then there is something very odd going on.  What do you see
if you open a terminal and type
ls /var/log


> Searching the "file systems" for the ".xsession" file gives "no hits".

It should be in your users home folder (that's why I said
~/.xsession-errors), so /home/your_user_name/.xsession-errors.  Since
this starts with a . it is a hidden file, so you may not immediately
see it, but if you open a terminal and type
ls .xs*
you should see it.

>
> Although I tried several times, I have not yet succeeded at "logging in as a
> different user", since this too apparently requires
> some very heavy computer acrobatics that I obviously have not mastered yet.

On the login screen do you not see Guest as an option?  Which version
of Ubuntu are you running (14.04 or whatever)?

If there is no Guest then I don't use xubuntu but I would not have
expected it to be difficult to add a new user.  Googling for
xubuntu add user
gave http://docs.xubuntu.org/1304/administrative-tasks.html as the
first hit, where it suggests that adding a user is almost trivial (see
section Managing Users).

But looking back at you message from a couple of days ago you said you
had already achieved that, so I don't understand what you are saying.

>
> Looks like just another case of having to start from scratch again .....

I think I have only ever once had to re-install ubuntu, and that was
when I suffered a power fail in the middle of updating a kernel.

Colin