Black screen after login on account in Asus-laptop of 16.04

Question

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.

Solution 1

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.

Solution 2

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
   

Comments

[ellisistfroh]

If you don't even see a cursor it maybe HW-related. Give some info on your equipment. Sticker is on the bottom of the Laptop! What distro# are U on & what flavour?

[Iarwain]

@ellisistfroh: This might be an obvious thing but what does HW stand for? And what exactly do you mean by distro# and flavour? Like Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Unity? I'm just starting to learn this operating system

[You'reAGitForNotUsingGit]

@Iarwain HW = Hardware.

[You'reAGitForNotUsingGit]

@Iarwain He's asking which version of Ubuntu you are running (14.04, 16.04...) And also if it is regular Ubuntu, or Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Xubuntu or Ubuntu Gnome.

[Iarwain]

@ellisistfroh Added my specs. Is this enough?

[ellisistfroh]

Yes, thanks! That's fine. So it's clear that your Laptop has Nvidia-Optimus-Technology: Have been looking at [Wikipedia] for your CPU. So the IGP is a Intel HD4000 [Wikipedia]:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Core_i5_micr‌​oprocessors

[David Foerster]

If it works in the guest profile it's clearly an issue of the configuration in your user profile. Could you please try to reset the Unity configuration (assuming you're using Unity)? Make a backup if you care about possibly restoring (parts of) it.

[You'reAGitForNotUsingGit]

@DavidFoerster yeah but.... Optimus is undoubtedly the cause of the issue here.

[You'reAGitForNotUsingGit]

@Iarwain - Well at least it's a temporary fix. I'll do some research for you.

[Iarwain]

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

[ellisistfroh]

@ 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.

[You'reAGitForNotUsingGit]

@ellisistfroh - I thought it was preferred to use gksudo?

[ellisistfroh]

@ 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]

@ 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]

@ 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.