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Please bear with me....I've been struggling for months using 12.04 with fading windows, extremely slow loading of web pages in Firefox, just an overall bad experience. I'm using an older Dell D620 withe nearly 4 MB Ram and dual 1.6 Mhz processors.

It seems a though it works fine at first installation, but then when I use terminal to add certain programs, etc., it bogs down and I've never figured out how to "un-do" what I've done. A major culprit for me has been Netflix Desktop.

Anyway, several days ago, I tried a clean install of Ubuntu 14.04. I looked at so many options to install the gnome classic desktop with the "no efects" option and luckily stumbled on one that worked without slowing things down at all. Everything was speeding along nicely - I couldn't believe it. So I used Backup to backup to a Windows share on a Networked WinXP laptop. That seemed to go well with no problems. BUT, then I did the deed...I installed Netflix Desktop and the whole thing started dragging along.

I ended up re-installing 14.04 and couldn't figure out which Gnome install I had used earlier. I was trying to just re-trace my steps and this time, NOT install Netflix Desktop. But I couldn't find the exact method, terminal commands I used to install the Gnome Desktop. It may have even ben the Gnome Desktop Environment from Software Center...like I said, I've tried so many ways that I got a bit confused.

One hint, for anyone who may be able to help, is that when I started up my laptop, there was something new with the good installation, a brief boot screen that said "Debian" across the bottom. I have not been able to reproduce this since. It was working perfectly, too. :(

So I tried another clean install of 14.04 but could not reproduce how I got the right Gnome desktop that had the Debian boot screen, as in my nice, speedy installation.

Frustrating. But since I did have the backup of the nicely working installation, I have tried repeatedly to just Restore it from the Windows Share.

But now I get an error message almost immediately after attempting to Restore - "Failed to mount Windows share: Connection timed out"

It didn't take but a second or two to receive that error message. I've seen numerous suggestions to access the Windows share with no luck at all.

If anyone can help me Restore that good, fast, perfect installation from my windows share, or alternately, to somehow reproduce how I finally, after all these months, did a clean install with that Debian boot screen and the option to boot using the Gnome Classsic with no effects, I sure would be grateful.

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After you installed 14.04, did you bring it fully up to date to 14.04.1? Ubuntu Trusty saw a stack of graphics related fixes. What is slow now could suddenly be faster after applying all outstanding updates and rebooting.

Also if the graphics hardware is so substandard on that machine, consider using lightweight desktop environments such as XFCE ("sudo apt-get install xfce4").

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  • Yes, I updated and for the first time ever, things were so fast. When I clicked on a tab in Firefox for example, it immediately activated - no lagging at all. Programs opened surprisingly fast. That's why I figured I better use the Backup program for the first time ever.
    – user301922
    Aug 8, 2014 at 18:04
  • By the way, I finally was able to Restore BUT, I still don't have that Debian boot screen, and only have Gnome Classis (Compiz) and Gnome Classic (Megtacity) options at login - no option for the "no effects" version. If I could just figure out how to find that correct Gnome desktop version, the one with the Debian boot screen and "no effects" option, I will just re-install 14.04, update, and add that correct Gnome desktop.
    – user301922
    Aug 8, 2014 at 18:13
  • I was hoping that by Restoring, that the entire system would be restored, debain desktop and all. But it didn't. Hey, I want to thank you so much for responding. I'm very dependent on my computer for communication since I am speech impaired and rarely get out of the house....so God bless you.
    – user301922
    Aug 8, 2014 at 18:14
  • 14.04 no longer has a "no effects" option, so that's why I suggested an alternative lightweight desktop environment if your GPU isn't up to scratch for Unity. What graphics hardware does that machine have anyway? Issue an lspci command in a terminal and look for "VGA" in the output. Aug 9, 2014 at 16:20

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