last evening I installed Fotoxx application to my Linux Mint desktop machine, using the software installer provided in the Mint install. It installed the Fotoxx and I used it to look at and tweak a few photos and also did some web browsing using Firefox, everything seemed to be working properly. So far, so good.
At the end of the evening I went to shut down the machine in the usual way and it opened the shutting down options box (restart, change user, switch off etc) but I noticed that the text in the options box was corrupted, all of the letters were displayed as small rectangles. Not a problem, I know that the last click box is for switching the machine off so I clicked that and the machine switched off.
This morning I switched the machine on in the normal way, it booted up to the log in screen, I logged in and then it seemed to just stop with a totally black screen except for the mouse pointer white arrow. The usual desktop didn't appear. The machine is not dead, the mouse pointer still moves but it doesn't find anything to select (so I know it isn't just doing everything as black on black). Oh.
So I powered off and removed the hard disk which I replaced with another (same size, same OS) and rebooted the machine. This also got through logging in and stalled at a black screen with the mouse pointer.
Now I am totally baffled. I swapped out the second hard disk for one with WinXP and the machine booted up and ran my CAD package OK.
So, it boots into WinXP OK, it fails to fully boot up into Linux Mint, on two different hard drives which were never in the system at the same time.
I can't get my mind around something that can have become changed in the bios/system hardware that would afflict Linux but not matter to WinXP.
To further complicate the picture, I tried to re-install Linux Mint over the second hard disk after booting up from the install/live CD. This trundles through the installation just so far and then it crashes the machine. The properties for the hard disk show that it is creating a bigger "used" area on the hard disk with each attempt. I don't know how to wipe the hard drive and get a proper clean install onto it.
Further, I succeeded in deleting all of the visible (and possibly some of the hidden) files and directories from the hard disk and then installed from the Mint CD. The installation ran through to completion but the machine still failed to reboot at the end.
This suggests to me that the installation on both of my hard disks may be OK but something else in the machine has been changed by the Fotoxx programme, something that stays when the power is off. Can this happen?
Lastly, this request for help via pprune has been done on the machine whilst running Linux Mint and Firefox from the Live CD, thus showing that the machine can run normally once booted up into Mint.
Anyone? Please!
Rans6................