For a long time I've been unable to get updates due to a "repositories not found" error. Yesterday someone fixed this for me but after installing 94 days worth of updates my system wanted to restart.

It looks like it is booting normally but then it opens a terminal and asks for my login and password.

I had tried Ctrl+ Alt +F7 and startx to no avail.

Here is everything that appears on screen when I turn the computer on.

Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS box-o-doom tty1
box-o-doom login:julian
password:
last login: Sun Jul 8 10:28:02 BST tty1
Linux box-o-doom 2.6.32-41-generic-pae #91-Ubuntu SMP Wed Jun 13 12:00:09 UTC 20
12 i686 GNU/Linux
Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS

Welcome to Ubuntu!
*Documentation: http://help.ubuntu.com

julian@box-o-doom:~$_

i then tried

dmesg

which produced hundreds of lines all very similar to the first line reproduced here

[    9.453119] type=1505 audit1341742405.022:10):  operation="profile_replace"
pid=743 name="/usr/lib/connman/scripts/dhclient-script"

follwed by this at the end

[    9.475880]   alloc irq_desc for 27 on node-1
[    9.475883]   alloc kstat_irqs on node-1
[    9.475890]forcedeth 0000:00:07.0: irq27 for MSI/MSI-X
[    9.760031] hda_code:ALC662 rev1: BIOS auto-probing.
[   10.048095] input:HDA Digital PCBeep as /devices/pci 0000:00:05.o/inp
ut/input6
[   10.862278] ppdev: user-space parallel port driver
[   20.268018] eth0: no IPv6 routers present
julian@box-o-doom:~$_

results of startx lots of text scrolls off the screen and i have no way of reading it. but everything i can see is reproduced below

current version of pixman: 0.16.4
    Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
    to make sure that you have the latest version
Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) defult setting,
    (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational.
    (WW) Warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
(==) log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: SUn Jul 8 12:02:23 2012
(==) using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf"
(==)using config directory: "/usr/lib/X11/xorg.conf.d"
FATAL: Module nvidia not found.
(EE) NVIDIA: Failed to load the NVIDIA kernal module please check your
(EE) NVIDIA:     systems kernal log for aditional error messages.
(EE) Failed to load module "nvidia" (module specific error, 0)
(EE) No drivers available.

Fatal server error:
no screens found

please consult the X.org foundation support
          at http://wiki.x.org
for help
please also check the log files at "/var/log/X.org.0.log" for aditional informati
on
 ddxSigGiveUp: Closing log
giving up
xinit:  No such file or directory (errno 2): unable to connect to X server
xinit:  No suck process (errno 3): server error
julian@box-o-doom:~$_