Login screen not appearing after upgrade from Debian Wheezy to Jessie

Question

I upgraded from Debian Wheezy to Debian Jessie by changing sources from /etc/apt/source.list and running:

apt-get update
apt-get --download-only dist-upgrade
apt-get dist-upgrade

This operation went fine and didn't seemingly break anything. However after shutting down computer and starting it again the login screen is not appearing after Grub menu. The screen is black after grub and it doesn't seem to respond to any key combinations. I have tried choosing recovery mode from Grub, but it doesn't help with the problem. Any ideas how I should start investigating this problem? I'm fairly new to Debian and I'm not sure how to fix this problem. Is there some way I could open the terminal and find logs about booting?

Edit: Pressing CTRL + ALT + F2 does not open shell. No key combination works in the black screen. My graphic card is AMD Radeon HD 7970.

Solution

CTRL + ALT + F2

Login, type service gdm stop or systemctl stop gdm

Type startx

Post the results in your question

Comments

[Alen Milakovic]

That sounds like the X server is not starting properly. Do you have an X config file? This is usually at /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Check if /var/log/Xorg.0.log exists. If either or both of these files exist, what are their contents? Also, what is your video card?

[eyoung100]

Try all the F Keys between 2 and 6, as in CTRL + ALT + F3

[Jeff Hewitt]

This is really a comment, not an answer.

[eyoung100]

@JosephR. I'll edit the answer, as he updates his question. Thank you for the suggestion.