failed upgrade from 12.04 to 14.04

[Stephen M. Webb]

On 08/13/2014 06:36 PM, Doug Stewart wrote:
> I have a dead system. It stops after i put my password in and press enter. The mouse still works but there is no prompt
> and no Icons to press

If you can get to a command line (for example, a virtual console using the control-alt-F1 key combination), you can try
a command like

  sudo apt-get install gnome-session-fallback

then restart (or restart LightDM using the command "sudo service lightdm restart").  You should then see an icon beside
your name in the LightDM screen that when clicked brings up a "Select desktop environment" menu, from which you may
select an alternate desktop environment.  Choose one, like "Gnome Fallback (Metacity)". That should let you get in to a
more familiar desktop with icons and menus, and from there you should be able to comfortably recover further.

If you're using gdm or something other than LightDM to handle your login authentication, it should work in a similar way.

-- 
Stephen M. Webb  <stephen at ubuntu.com>
https://launchpad.net/~bregma