Zorin Freezes at Login Screen

Hoping someone can address this issue. I wanted to introduce a friend to the Linux world by installing Zorin. I DL'd Zorin OS 5 and installed from an ISO file. The system is a brand-new Windows 7 Home Edition on an AMD Quad-Core A6 Processor, 6 GB RAM, 500 GB HD, using Radeon 6530M Graphics. Booting from the CD, I chose to "Install Directly" > "Install Alongside Windows". The process split the HD 1/2 for Windows and 1/2 for Zorin. Initial installation went well, Zorin completed the install process and I booted into Zorin and everything seemed to be OK. I wanted to check to be sure Windows was OK, so I rebooted and the GRUB menu appeared and I chose Windows 7 from the list. When Windows booted, it wanted to perform a disk check so I let it complete the disk check routine. I was able to boot into Windows when the disk check was completed. OK all good so far, so I reboot, choose Zorin (default) from the GRUB menu and the User Login screen appears. This is where the problem lies, I cannot get the mouse to move, it is frozen. Tabbing the keyboard to try to get the laptop to login does not work either. Everything is frozen.

So now I reinstall Zorin using the process above (the default choices during installation), same thing happens again. After the 2nd install when the system reboots and you get to the login screen everything is frozen.

Is this too new of a system and the correct drivers are not available? What else could be wrong? Did the Windows disk check cause an issue and if so how can I work around it? Any guidance is appreciated.

Hi stevedude,

boot your PC and select "recovery mode" from the list, go to "dpkg" and press enter then when it asks for you to say yes, type "y" and let it do its thing, wait until finished and then restart PC by doing Crtl+ Alt + Del and see what happens afterwards, I had the same problem and this cured it for me!!.

Hope this helps you further.

Regards Wolfman

this software is a pain in the a** to install it,i better start using the live cd.

Thanks Wolfman for the feedback. I have to wait until this weekend to access my friends laptop, but I'll report back on what happens.

OK, I did as suggested and booted into the recovery mode menu > dpkg > and reboot. This did not work, there were all kinds of errors thrown during the dpkg phase - The system still freezes. I went to the recovery menu again, but this time I chose "Low Graphics Mode" and I was able to get into the Zorin Desktop. So now I'm thinking its a graphics driver issue. I downloaded and installed all the latest updates via Update Manager. Rebooted the system and the same thing happens. It freezes at the User Login screen.

I used the laptop power button to restart the system and upon the 2nd try, I was able to login to the desktop, however upon subsequent reboots, it randomly freezes at the User Login screen. Now, if I do reach the Zorin Desktop, when I try to do a system shutdown, it just reboots the laptop, it will not shutdown. I have to do a hard shutdown by press/hold the laptop power button or I have to boot into Windows and do a shutdown from there.

So to recap, I can get to the desktop randomly between freezes. I cannot do a shutdown when I am in the desktop, it always reboots only. This is where I am at. Any other suggestions?

You mentioned that you think it may be graphic card related, did you install the graphic card drivers, they are not installed automatically!!.

Control Center > Hardware > Additional Drivers > select recommended!!. This is for Nvidia and ATI drivers only!!.

Regards Wolfman

Thanks again for your time wolfman. I overlooked upgrading the graphics drivers when I updated the rest of the system. I'll try that and report back in a couple of days.

I suspect the graphics driver because when I accessed the recovery menu, choosing the low graphics option got me into the desktop with no problems.

Hopefully this will be the issue. I really want my friend to use Linux without any hassles and this is my way of giving back to the Linux community by exposing as many as I can to a Windows alternative. Zorin is a really great operating system for that.

Sad, but updating the proprietary drivers did not have any effect (This Toshiba Satellite does have Nvidia chipsets). To help pinpoint the problem, I noticed this pattern: If you move the cursor as the Plymouth login screen appears, the system will not freeze and you can get in. If you do not move the cursor and a small black balloon appears because the mouse is hovering over the user name, the system freezes every time.

Unfortunately, my friend needs this laptop for work and just wants it to work so they requested I just install Ubuntu.

I would like to know if there is a solution to this issue or if its a known bug. Many thanks for the assistance.

Debian, as well as most of the distributions based on it, like Ubuntu, does not make any distinction between runlevels 2 to 5. See also the Debian FAQ on booting. Ubuntu also does not use /etc/inittab as it uses Upstart instead. I think some troubleshooting is in order here......

(In Ubuntu, inittab runlevel should be 2)
# The default runlevel.
id:2:initdefault:


* 0 - Halt
* 1 - Single
* 2 - Full multi-user with display manager (GUI)
* 3 - Full multi-user with display manager (GUI)
* 4 - Full multi-user with display manager (GUI)
* 5 - Full multi-user with display manager (GUI)
* 6 - Reboot

You can verify your setup by typing:

sudo runlevel

( On my system, it shows: N 2 - so I am running at inittab runlevel 2 )

Which runlevel are YOU at?

If when you run the above command it says that you are indeed on runlevel 2, then you know that your entry into inittab is being honored. You can change to a different runlevel by using the following command to change to inittab runlevel 3 by typing:

sudo telinit 3

Try that and reboot. Any changes? Does it now work or is it still the same?

If it's different and the problem is resolved, good. At that point, I'd do some investigating to find out what went wrong, why and where. I would start by checking some files in /var/log files for more information.

If it's the same and the problem persists, let's go to inittab runlevel 1 by doing this:

sudo telinit 1

Try that and reboot. Any changes? Does it now work or is it still the same? Check log files while you're at it. dmesg as well.

In my example it says that I'm on runlevel 2. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runlevel 2-5 on ubuntu all use a gui. Each defined run level should have an rcX.d directory where X is the run level number. The contents of the /etc/rc2-5.d directories are all the same, so you could customize lets say rc3.d. The contents of the rcX.d directory determines what happens at that runlevel. Because runlevel 3 is not used by default on ubuntu you could go into /etc/rc3.d and change what is loaded. For example the file /etc/rc3.d/S13gdm is used to start your gui. You could test this by temporarily moving the /etc/rc3.d/s13gdm file to another location and rebooting or if you are not already on runlevel 3 by issuing sudo telinit 3

At this point, if you have done all of the above, set the system to inittab runlevel 1, reboot into it, and then run sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-org

Now set the inittabrunlevel back to the default 2 and reboot. What happens? Remember to check logs.

As a side note.......

If you create your own /etc/inittab file, Ubuntu will honour it.

To change your runlevels the Ubuntu way look in /etc/init.d/ which contains startup scripts. Then look in /etc/rc#.d/ which contains symlinks to scripts in /etc/init.d/. The name of the symlinks determines what will be started/stopped and in what order. Look in the README file in any of the /etc/rc#.d/ directories for details.

The # in the /etc/rc#.d/ is the runlevel number.

This is totally configurable, so for example, if you wanted to kill GDM, you could do so via this method below...
( ***** DON'T DO THIS PART BELOW, AS IT'S ONLY AN EXAMPLE!!! ***** )

To stop GDM from loading in runlevel 2 (Ubuntu default runlevel) rename /etc/rc2.d/S30gdm to /etc/rc2.d/K70gdm

The S tells Ubuntu to start the process, and the K tells Ubuntu to kill it. The number is the order in which it should be started/stopped.

Have a look at the man page for update-rc.d which can be used to create/update/remove the init script symlinks for you.

You can also install the Boot-Up Manager (BUM) which is a graphical tool to configure runlevels. It's in the repositories. Just sudo apt-get install bum

swarfendor437 wrote:Hi Obsidian1723, Just a word of thanks for your continuing input.

Thanks swarfendor437 I'm just trying to toss some help out there and join in the community of Zorin OS. I see you posting a bit too, good to see some acticity on here.

Unfortunately, I no longer have the laptop. I had to do what I could and give it back to my friend who needed it. What I ended up doing was installing VirtualBox and then installing Zorin OS in the VB. I set the graphics to 3D Acceleration. As an aside, my friend is loving Zorin so I'm glad it had a happy ending.

I wish I could use Obsidans advice, but this is what I found. I tried installing all of the latest versions (as of 9-7-11) of Zorin, Ubuntu, openSUSE, Mandriva, and Fedora. ALL of them hung at the login screen as described earlier. Another issue with all versions is that the system would not perform a shutdown. It would only reboot when choosing the shutdown. Using a CLI shutdown command did not affect the results.

I'll be back later to mark the thread as closed. Thanks to everyone for their input and thanks Obsidian for the troubleshooting method. I will definitely refer back to this for future assistance.

Hey stevedude, thanks for the very informative troubleshooting of what you were able to do. Including the other distros which had the same exact issue, really rules out Zorin OS as the cause. (..and it even rules out Ubuntu since you mentioned SuSE). It just sounds like an anti-Linux hardware setup. Sometimes that happens.

I hope you stick around and do give Zorin OS another shot. Thank you for heloing spread the OS and freedom in software.