Mint xfce 13 - black screen

[ebb]

Hi,

After installing (in other words, from a live CD), and rebooting, the screen is black. Everything seems functional, but
with a black screen, I can't see any icons, background, etc. I've searched for fixes, but haven't had success. This is
running on a 10 year old Compaq desktop with and AMD Athlon 3400+, with 512MB of RAM.

Also, I've noticed that after leaving it unattended for (? whatever the default) minutes, the screen saver comes up, but
then when I move the mouse, I still end up with a black screen.

Ran Ubuntu for many years, until it became too bulky for that PC.

Apologies in advance if this has been asked many times, and I just didn't find the answer to this on the board.

Thanks!

[aac74]

is the laptop backlight on ? Do the laptop brightness contols work ?

some laptops boot with the backlight off on the login screen and you need to use brightness controls to turn it back on.

[ebb]

This is a desktop, with a flatscreen monitor that's (? 5? ) years old. It seems unlikely that this is
a backlight issue, since a "4th of July fireworks" - type screensaver eventually comes up. It's
after I move the mouse that, after the screensaver stops, the screen SOMETIMES stays black. No
background, visible icons, etc.

Thanks anyway though!

[igor83]

This is a desktop, with a flatscreen monitor that's (? 5? ) years old. It seems unlikely that this is
a backlight issue, since a "4th of July fireworks" - type screensaver eventually comes up. It's
after I move the mouse that, after the screensaver stops, the screen SOMETIMES stays black. No
background, visible icons, etc.

Thanks anyway though!

To restore your icons, if you can open a terminal and see it, then enter xfdesktop at the command line. Then hit Ctrl-C and exit. Your desktop icons should be restored. If it doesn't work: you must trick Xfce to let you have your icons back. If you can, go to Settings -> Desktop and change the background of the desktop to something different--a different wallpaper. Then enter xfdesktop at the command line again and see whether this works. I had a situation in LM 14 Xfce where the icons disappeared, and stayed gone after rebooting, and this is how I got them back.

You might consider configuring your xorg.conf, if you haven't already, specifying resolution and refresh rate. This isn't necessary for all displays, but can solve otherwise intractable problems on some. Are you using the proprietary ATI driver?

[legit imposter]

thanks i had the same problem but now it's fixed!!!!!

[igor83]

thanks i had the same problem but now it's fixed!!!!!

Yeppers happened to me, that's why I posted the solution on my blog and here.
Wish the OP had come back and changed his subject to [SOLVED]

[celem]

This just happened to me. When I executed xfdesktop, the shell replied "The program 'xfdesktop' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing sudo apt-get install xfdesktop4"

I did this, then again executed xfdesktop. It displayed "(xfdesktop:3695): GLib-GIO-CRITICAL **: g_file_get_path: assertion `G_IS_FILE (file)' failed" but when I ^C out my desktop was restored.

Thanks.

[cipricus]

Most likely a VGA driver issue. Using 'nomodeset' option on live CD boot this is avoided.

I experienced this on a new laptop and after a while noticed that this was solved by pushing the laptop button that increases the display brightness: on an old desktop this must be a different matter.

See if you recognize your problem here (http://askubuntu.com/q/189706/47206) or here (http://askubuntu.com/q/195041/47206).