Black Screen

[johnnyj]

I'm new to Linux myself. I've only used it for a few months. But I'll take a crack at this.

What happens if you log into the terminal window and type "startx"?

If that doesn't work, maybe X (the software that gives you a GUI in Linux) is configured wrong.

When you're in the grub menu, boot into recovery mode. Then select the "Xfix" option in the recovery menu. Then drop into a root terminal, and type "reboot". You probably won't need to reboot, but it might help.

If that doesn't work, boot into recovery mode, drop into a root terminal, type "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg", then answer the questions. Then when it's done, type "reboot".

If that doesn't work, I'm out of ideas.

[johnnyj]

Well, that's weird. Maybe I can still help.

startx - get error: server is already running on display 0

If the X server is already running, maybe it's doing something. What happens when you type Ctrl+Alt+F7? This should bring up your 7th "virtual terminal" (or "TTY"), which is the one your X server runs in.

[johnnyj]

By the way, you said you couldn't get to Xfix. You can get to things like Xfix by going into "recovery mode". This is how you go into recovery mode in Mint4Win:

• Start your computer.
  
  When you get that screen that says "Select operating system to boot", select Linux Mint and hit enter.
  
  Now it'll tell you to press Esc to see a menu. Hit the Esc key.
  
  Now you're in the grub menu. There should be an entry that has the words "(recovery mode)" at the end of it. Select that entry and hit enter.
  
  Now you should get a menu that has various options in it, like Xfix and drop to a root terminal. This is recovery mode.

[johnnyj]

Pressing Ctrl+Alt+F7 brings a black screen (no signal)
Tried recovery mode, xfix was selected but still no signal

I have tried to look at the xorg.conf file but there doesnt appear to be any ( sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf), maybe this is the problem?

You probably got the message:

Gtk-WARNING **: Cannot open display

when you tried to open gedit. gedit can't run in a terminal because it's graphical.

However, nano can run in a terminal. So you should be able to get to xorg.conf with:

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sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Now, I don't know what any of the stuff in xorg.conf means. But I do know that if xorg.conf is messed up, you may be able to fix it with:

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sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg

which will guess what to put in xorg.conf and put it in there.

If that doesn't work, the following may still work:

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sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

The difference between this and the other one is that this one will ask you questions instead of just guessing. I had a similar problem to yours a few weeks ago, and I was able to fix it this way.

After changing your xorg.conf, it's a good idea to reboot with:

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sudo reboot

If that doesn't work, then you might have a driver issue, which I don't know how to fix.