I had been told my Ubuntu 24.04 package manager was a complete mess and that I should do a clean install of the operating system. Before I could find how to save everything I didn’t want to lose, the computer stopped working. Now, when I turn on the power, I get a screen that shows an image of a monitor with an unhappy face and the text: ‘Oh no! Something has gone wrong. A problem has occurred and the system can’t recover. Please contact a system administrator.’ I can’t do anything with this screen: the keyboard does nothing and there’s no mouse cursor.
I contacted a local organisation that helps people with computer problems and they told me it would be too much trouble finding the problem and seeing if it could be fixed, and instead just gave me another laptop that they installed Ubuntu on. I’ve been getting this old ThinkPad set up and it’s okay, but I can’t believe I’ve wrecked the other machine beyond repair. I can open a terminal with the keyboard, but I don’t know what to do in there to see just how messed up I’ve made it, and whether I can do anything about it. Ideally I’d like to save some files before abandoning it, but if I can’t do that I’d like to at least be able to install a new OS.
I suspect it was while trying to learn how to run commands that I messed everything up. I’m really leery of mucking around in the terminal and making things worse. Is there a simple and straightforward diagnostic and hopefully a way to recover at least some functionality? I had Timeshift on there if that makes a difference. Any suggestions for an inexperienced user would be greatly appreciated.
@nevj@callpaul.eu@4dandl4 When I insert a USB drive I see nothing different on that error screen. How can I wind back Timeshift? I don’t know the correct terminology to describe the issue. There’s no start screen, no login screen, no graphical user interface at all. I’ve never tried opening the laptop. I’d rather avoid digging into the hardware until sure there was no less invasive alternative. Would it require extensive knowledge of working in terminals to be able to see in there what has gone wrong, and possibly to perform any actions that could make the computer usable again? At this point, I’m prepared to give up all my files as lost, but I’m still hoping the computer can be made to work with a new system. If the only answer is to remove the HDD, would replacing it with a new one allow me to boot up another OS from a USB drive?
@nevj@callpaul.eu@4dandl4 I pressed the power button, then F2, and saw nothing. Then I pressed F10 – still nothing. Then I pressed F10 many times in rapid succession, just to see if anything would happen. After several seconds, many lines of text appeared on the screen, then many more lines which scrolled out of sight faster than I could try to read. When that finished the screen went dark. After many more seconds, the ‘Oh no’ screen came on. F2 or F10 seem to do nothing there. I inserted the same USB stick, with Ventoy, that was used to install Ubuntu 24.04 before, but saw nothing else. There’s no sign of the BIOS screen. I appreciate all the helpful suggestions. Maybe I’m not following directions correctly. Any more ideas? Many thanks.
I have to redact that… @abu 's link says that it has reached the stage where Ubuntu boots and has an error with the Display Manager (gdm).
The normal way to deal with DM problem is to use a live flash drive, mount the internal disk root file partition, find the gdm binary, and temporarily rename it. Then logout of the live system, boot, and it should boot to a console login.