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I accidentally clicked the "guest" user profile and my system restarted itself, and now I can't get past a black screen with only the mouse pointer visible. Can somebody help me please?

Zanna
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Colleen
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  • Did you restart the system? – George Udosen Sep 30 '17 at 10:44
  • Do a boot recovery, enter fsck option and run it. Maybe some corrupted file. – Redbob Sep 30 '17 at 11:00
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    Based on your description, in particular the part about how the mouse pointer is visible, I think [Unity doesn't load, no Launcher, no Dash appears](https://askubuntu.com/questions/17381/unity-doesnt-load-no-launcher-no-dash-appears) may help. – Eliah Kagan Sep 30 '17 at 12:09

1 Answers1

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  • Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 and you will be taken to a command line terminal.
  • Enter your user name and password to log in to your installed system.
  • Type: sudo systemctl stop lightdm
  • Type: sudo systemctl start lightdm
  • You should now be taken to the Display Manager's login screen where you can select your session type and user account.
  • In case you get lost, press Ctrl+Alt+F7 to be taken back to the graphical system
  • If this does not work, if you manage to go past steps 1 and 2, run reboot to reboot your system.
marko
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  • Few notes: Instead of using stop and start, the user can use `sudo systemctl restart lightdm`. The required password is not the root one, but the user password. – Mostafa Ahangarha Sep 30 '17 at 15:58
  • Thanks, got mixed up a bit there and I corrected the response about the password. – marko Oct 01 '17 at 19:08