Hi, Friends

Please can someone assist me with trouble shooting a hardware problem.

I went to this post by TobiSGD to see if there was anything else I could have done. Hopefully, I covered all the required bases:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...8/#post4949330

Problem:
When I boot the computer up, it gets to the grub screen, but won't get into the GUI. Blinking cursor in top left corner of monitor / screen.

OS:
Linux Mint 18, 64 bit

The procedure I followed to establish what the problem was as follows:

1) Tried to boot into Mint's recovery mode, but it jammed on a line I can't remember.
2) I assumed that the X.org file got corrupted somehow so I tried to boot with a Debian 8.5 disk I had lying around with the intention of locating it and fixing the problem. It got to the screen where it asks if you want to go "Live", Install, etc.. When I opted to go "Live" it hung with a cursor in the top left corner.
3) Removed graphics card from computer and plugged monitor into the motherboard VGA port and booted to Linux Mint (installed on HDD). Problem persisted with cursor in top left corner. So it wasn't the graphics card.
4) Tried to boot with the Debian 8.5 disk. Same as before, cursor sits in top left hand corner after selecting "Live".
5) PANIC!! Went to lie down for twenty minutes to relax. I hoped like crazy that, at the very least, the hard drive hadn't crashed.
6) Had a cup of tea.
7) Looked in the CMOS, but when I moved from one option to the next, it would take forever to move.
8) Reset the CMOS to all its defaults.
9) Looked again in the CMOS, but now the the selected item would jump around like crazy.
10) Unplugged the keyboard and problem stopped. Plugged keyboard back in and that seemed to have fixed that problem. Resetting a keyboard - that's a new one for me.
11) Again reset the CMOS to all its defaults then tried to reboot. Problem persisted.
12) Shutdown and reseated the ram and removed other dust from inside the casing.
13) Went through the entire process as above, no success.
14) Dismantled the computer, took out the hard drives and put them into another computer I had lying around.
15) Booted up the old computer as normal, no problems. (I love Linux - I didn't have to re-register half my programs with anyone because of a change of hardware - BONUS!).
16) Put graphics card from the other computer into this older computer, booted up and it worked perfectly.

I'm at a loss of what might have happened. I can't even run a diagnostic CD on the machine to see what the problem is as the computer doesn't seem to like graphics any more.

Has something in the processor or motherboard broken? Besides the graphics card, there were no other cards in the computer.

Please help.

Problem Computer:
Processor: AMD Phenom II X6 1055T
Motherboard: ECS A880GM-A3
RAM 10GiB (2 X 4Gib + 1 X 2GiB)
HDD1: 500Gib working drive SATA
HDD2: 1TB storage drive SATA

Other info:
Monitor is LCD by LG, model FLATRON W2234S.
Because of where I live, we have frequent power outages and "brown-outs", so I have a 1.2kVA "true sine wave" UPS running to ensure power to the computer remains constant.
Computer is not losing time or date (when entering the CMOS, the time and date is correct).

that would be an important detail.
take a photo of it.
there is no such file. anywhere. even if you mean xorg.conf, i think that is the most far-fetched idea in this post.
now this is very strange! are you sure this live usb/disk works?
could this be a (u)efi issue in the end?
are you really talking about the BIOS here?
otherwise i don't understand.

Hi, Ondoho

Thank for replying.

Have just got home so I can follow your instructions. As you can see, I'm not quite as well versed in the way of fixing Linux as others here, I'm more of a user than administrator, so please be patient with me.

Yes, I meant the xorg.conf file. During my search for answers, I came across a few posts on other forums (fora?) that refer to this file as a possible problem when the "cursor in the corner" problem occurs. Other posts referred to another file, X11.conf I think it was, not so sure now. As for breaking the system further by fiddling with those files, well, I do regular backups to an external drive so I would have only lost a couple of hours worth of work. Not such a big deal.

Photo:
When I started the computer up, everything worked perfectly - so no photo is possible - but I will start and stop the computer until that error occurs again. But now I am very confused - things can't just fix themselves. It goes against the very nature of how things work (or break).

The Debian disk was what I used to load a PC not even a few days ago, so yes, it does work.

No on the (U)EFI, the system uses BIOS.

I'll post back here when (if) that problem occurs again.