Black Screen With Only White Cursor

I downloaded Mint 15 - MATE and made an iso image DVD disk. Then rebooted with DVD in drive. The followinh happened
Splash screen with Linux Mint on
Then Automatic boot in 9, 8, 7 etc secs
Then Linus Mint 15 in Courier with 4 dots underneath
After 2/3 mins screen turned black, covered in white U letters with Welcome to Linux in background
Then wide red and black horizontal bands
Then a more graphic screen with 2 Linux Mint logos on green and white bands, top one a bit fuzzy. Cursor has a red box around it. Icons for Computer, Mint Home and Install Linux mint 'ghosted' with background showing through
Firefox loads, again ghosted, but cannot access internet even though wifi light lit on computer.

Computer is Fujitsu Seimens Amilo L7320 1.7 GHz and 960 RAM

What is going wrong?

Want to try Linux as computer freezes in Windows XP after about 20 mins.

Help appreciated.

Wow, I got my new Linux pc yesterday and it's very very fast. It's faster than my new MacBook.
So I go to the user account which also says administrator so I'm presuming that's the root owner?????? and I typed in my name and changed the password. The guy who sold it to me named the password user and the computer user. Yet when I go to the terminal my username and computer is still called user@user
How do I change the root password and computer name?

Wow, I got my new Linux pc yesterday and it's very very fast. It's faster than my new MacBook.
So I go to the user account which also says administrator so I'm presuming that's the root owner?????? and I typed in my name and changed the password. The guy who sold it to me named the password user and the computer user. Yet when I go to the terminal my username and computer is still called user@user
How do I change the root password and computer name?

I need to be able to create new user accounts and make sure they're forced to reset their password upon first login, also if they don't log in within 4 days of the account creation their account must automatically lock. How do I accomplish this?

thank you.

hello there,
OK here is the problem;
Whenever I try to start my laptop the grub menu loads as usually, it starts booting but upon completion, there is this blinking cursor and screen and then nothing. It started when I logged out of one of my account and logged into Root account and again logged out of the root account. That was the time when this thing started.
I dont know what happened. I researched, found lots of threads but with no help..
There is no any graphics card in the laptop. (so couldnt be a driver issue i think)
Edited the grub ( quite splash nomodeset, etc etc,, but didnt work )
I really dont know what to do at this stage,
P.S i am a noob though.

I just created a Guest user account. When I rebooted, it went right into the Guest Account, without allowing me to choose and log in to the admin account. I tried Login Window and New Login in Administration panel. I tried Logout, but nothing happened when trying.

A few of my servers show that this user id has expired.

I know that this is the name of a user account and group account and if I check out /etc/passwd there is an entry under /sbin/nologin. And, if I check under say top -u nobody, I don't see anything running for that user account. However that is the extent of my knowledge on this user account.

Should I be concerned that the passwd for this account is expired or are there cron jobs/programs that rely on this account?

thanks

when i turn my PC on that says ubuntu,recovery and bios i think i click on ubuntu then get a black screen with a blinking cursa tonight i typed in start x and it loaded PC worked how it should but why doesn't it go straight to the page were i put my password in, i should get ubuntu with dots underneath, then the screen to put my password in but i don't and if i shut my PC down it takes longer then i cant get internet and i have to keep returning to the page and click ubuntu eventually it boots up my friend suggested i type start x on the black screen which i did tonight i am aware its probley something i did when i first loaded ubuntu os i had the PC built for me with no os onit because i wanted a fresh linux/ubuntu systen

Hi everyone,

I tried to install Elementary Freya and everything was good, though suddenly while using my laptop I get a black screen. I cannot use the mouse nor the keyboard. When I press the power button, to put the computer in sleep mode, and the open it again, I can see the desktop but cannot do anything.
I tried to use Mint 17.1 and then reinstalled Elementary again but I keep getting the same problem.
I use Linux next to windows 8.1

Thanks in advance, I would appreciate any help

Hi all. I can't connect to my Win 8.1 box from Linux Mint. I can ping the Win box successfully. I can access my Linux share from my Win box. It seems like the problem is with windows. I've been working on this problem for about three days now with no luck. I've uninstalled Norton Security in my Win box. I've deactivated Microsoft's firewall. Not helping. My smb.conf is:

[homes]
read only = no
security = domain
workgroup = WORKGROUP

[share]
comment = Shared Data
path = /home/gary/share
gues ok = yes
writeable = no
browseable = yes

To make things simple i created only one shared folder on my Win box, asm. On Linux i type: sudo mount.cifs //GARYZ97/asm /home/gary/share -o user=Gary ; Gary is apparently my correct Windows username. BTW, i've also tried gary.
Linux responds with: [sudo] password for gary: jj ; this is my correct sudo password
Next response is: Password for Gary@//GARYZ97/asm: ; here i have tried my Microsoft Account password; i've tried just hitting enter; i've tried jj my Linux password. I'm at my wits end. What am i doing wrong? I've googled so many different sites but no one seems to have the problem i have. Please help. I don't want to pull out all my hair. I can access my Linux share from Windows, edit it, save it, and i see the changes on my Linux box. I know i'm being repetitive here but i just can't access my Windows share from Linux. I have run testparm on smb.conf and no problems there. Almost forgot. After entering what i believe is my correct Windows password i get: mount error(115): Operation now in progress, and then on the next line, Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g. man mount.cifs)