Problem with Ubuntu

[scottish144]

I've been using Ubuntu for the last few months, and was perfectly sastified until recently. I booted into Ubuntu as normal and found that the splash screen did not function properly (got to see text on black as opposed to text on brown with Ubuntu logo). Weird, but nothing big, so I let it continue and it booted up fine. The I tried OpenOffice, and immidiantly got an application error message. I rebooted, same thing. This started happening to several other applications, such as QCAD, FF, Gimp, etc. So I try to reinstall, and the partitioner won't even come up. All I get is a blue screen and have to reboot. I've done virus/HD scans up the wazoo and nothing has been found. Reinstalling the affected applications is impossible, as apt-get/synaptic won't let me uninstall them. WTF?

 

[n0cmonkey]

What errors are you getting?

 

[scottish144]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
What errors are you getting?

"This application has failed due to an internal error". Something close to that. Not the most descriptive of errors.

 

[Need4Speed]

open up terminal...then do

sudo cat /var/log/syslog | grep {application name here}

good chance that something more descriptive will be in there....

or

sudo tail /var/log/syslog -n50

after the app crashes

 

[nweaver]

sounds like it might be hard drive failing?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Run the application from an xterm. Then give us the exact error.

 

[scottish144]

Originally posted by: nweaver
sounds like it might be hard drive failing?

Definately not HD. I dual boot and Windows works fine.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Run the application from an xterm. Then give us the exact error.

 

[Nothinman]

If your software is crashing for no reason and now the installer doesn't run properly anymore it definitely sounds like a hardware problem.

Reinstalling the affected applications is impossible, as apt-get/synaptic won't let me uninstall them. WTF?

If it's a dependency problem you can always use the reinstall option instead of manually removing/installing them.

 

[scottish144]

NVM. Errors stopped. Weird. Wonder if I was hacked. I'll see if the installer works.

Update: Installer still fails. 🙁 Weird.

 

[nweaver]

"still fails" isn't going to get you much help...

 

[cleverhandle]

Could be failing memory or an overclocked machine. Just because it works in Windows doesn't mean it will work in Linux.

 

[scottish144]

Originally posted by: cleverhandle
Could be failing memory or an overclocked machine. Just because it works in Windows doesn't mean it will work in Linux.

Not OCed. Still get a blank blue screen when I try to open the partitioner. I'll rip my comp open tomorrow and see if its anything obvious. This comp is 7 years old, with all original parts, so it may be dying at long last. Thx anyway guys.