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I am using ubuntu 10.04. Over the last couple of days, I am having a weird problem: once the machine gets into screen saver, it is impossible to get it "out".

I do see the mouse cursor move as I move the mouse, but the login popup (with user / password) does not show up and the screen remains "frozen". Any idea what might be going wrong?

For the time being, I have no choice but to restart the computer in order to be able to resume work. Thanks.

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migrated from stackoverflow.com Mar 4 '11 at 17:08

3 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

My work-around for this bug was to wait a bit without moving my mouse until the pointer disappears. Then press a key from the keyboard to bring up the login window. If that doesn't work, try to change to text console with CTRL-ALT-F1 or F2, login and run killall gnome-screensaver, then return to gnome desktop with CTRL-ALT-F7.

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forcefsck -- perfect answer!! I did not know about the tricks of CTRL-ALT-F1 and CTRL-ALT-F7 -- although it appears to me that your solution will work. Thank you. – user11833 Mar 4 '11 at 20:12
Thanks, the first approach worked for me - though I could not see the password dialog. So I had to be careful to press a key just once to break out of the screensaver, then enter the password, then hit Enter. – limist Oct 26 '11 at 1:54
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troubleshooting ways

Troubleshooting A :

  • go to single user mode by running alt+Ctrl+f1
    • after getting into single user mode check which process is utilizing more cpu .
    • kill that process and get into gui mode
    • In gui search for that process and stop that service or remove completely

Troubleshooting B : check the system logs and find out the errors in the log

Troubleshooting C : Change the screen saver and check

if it doesn't works final,

Caution : this command clears all your custom settings and restores the default ubuntu desktop settings

rm -rfv .gconf/
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Thank you -- this seems helpful – user11833 Mar 4 '11 at 20:11
up vote 1 down vote

In the single user mode in the console login with your user name and password, type this to search for the process:

ps -ef | grep screen

find the process id and kill it by:

kill -1 <process id>
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