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This question had been asked multiple times but since they're almost older than two years, I will ask it again. The answers to those question couldn't help me either.

My problem:
After logging in on my account I get a black screen. I don't even see my cursor. I did not change major settings and the problem occurred randomly. When I start a guest session, everything works fine.
I don't know if it's worth mentioning but when I take a screenshot, I see two desktops in the output. Like this. I don't have anything plugged in.

Steps taken:

  • The solution in this question doesn't work. The file in the mentioned directory doesn't exist.
  • Multiple answers on this subject mention (NVIDIA) drivers. As far as I know, no drivers have been installed/updated by me nor did I edit settings related to graphics. My laptop isn't Dual-Boot either and I erased the entire disk and replaced Windows with Ubuntu (through the Ubuntu installation screen). So existing drivers where probably deleted.

My OS Type: Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (regular), 64-bit

My Hardware:

Hardware: Asus laptop R500V
Processor: Intel Core i5-3210M
CPU: 5GHz × 4
Graphics: Intel Ivy Bridge Mobile
Graphics Card: NVIDIA Corporation GF199m [GeForce 610M]

I hope I've given enough information and I hope you can help me.

Community
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Iarwain
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2 Answers2

5

I found out why the screen turns black when I login on my personal account. It appears I have accidentally pushed a button that toggles between monitors/beamers when connected. When nothing is connected to the laptop the build-in screen still turns off. This is done by pressing Fn+F8. This is applicable for the Asus R500V series

My thanks to the people who tried to help me. I'm in the process of learning Ubuntu and your suggestions/answers helped my understanding of the OS.

Iarwain
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  • So I wonder why removing .Xauthority worked in the first place then... – You'reAGitForNotUsingGit Jun 28 '16 at 15:39
  • @ larwain: Mark your answer as solving the problem, pls. Lucky to hear it was not a more serious issue :-)

    You could check if you have kscreen installed: dpkg-query -l kscreen

     – ellisistfroh Jun 28 '16 at 15:58
  • @ larwain: Mark your answer as solving the problem, pls. Lucky to hear it was not a more serious issue :-) You could check if you have kscreen installed: dpkg-query -l kscreen

    The counter-check would be to see if you could configure your laptop-monitor as main-screen via Kubuntus System-Settings.

     – ellisistfroh Jun 28 '16 at 16:45
  • @AndroidDev As far as I can tell, .Xauthority stores credentials in cookies for Xsessions. It is used to authenticate connections to the display. Maybe deleting the file resets the configuration to the build-in monitor. Haven't got a clue why it would be reversed after a second reboot. Do you think it's worth a seperate question? Source: http://askubuntu.com/a/300737/558082 – Iarwain Jun 29 '16 at 08:12
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There are many possible causes for this problem. And thus, there are many solutions, some of which might work for someone else but not you.

That said, give this a try:

  1. Open up tty1 on the logon screen by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1

  2. Login at the prompt.

  3. Then run these commands:

    sudo rm .Xauthority
sudo shutdown -r now
David Foerster
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You'reAGitForNotUsingGit
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  • This works, but only once. When I restart after the sudo shutdown -r now everything works. But when I reboot after that, .Xauthority is yet again present and my screen black. I have to delete it again to log in. – Iarwain Jun 27 '16 at 12:08
  • @Iarwain - Well at least it's a temporary fix. I'll do some research for you. – You'reAGitForNotUsingGit Jun 27 '16 at 14:55
  • After a few restarts and reboots this solution stopped working. .Xauthority is still present but deletion is not a fix anymore after a few times – Iarwain Jun 28 '16 at 08:16
  • @ Android Dev: Maybe the access-rights in the home-folder are bowed? @ larwain: Did you ever start a GUI-program with preceeding sudo? It is to be preferred to use pkexec instead. Anyway there are logfiles to interpret, see /var/log/xorg.0.log for the one of the current session. Previous ones show higher numbers. – ellisistfroh Jun 28 '16 at 09:46
  • @ellisistfroh - I thought it was preferred to use gksudo? – You'reAGitForNotUsingGit Jun 28 '16 at 09:47
  • @ Android Dev: That would need a separarte discussion, gksu would need to have to be installed. Developers decided that packagekit would do the job pretty well.

    @larwain. Added a thanks above, and corrected some typos in your question (for our eyes to charm). ;-) Will continue here now.

     – ellisistfroh Jun 28 '16 at 11:06