Login to black screen, restart unity to menus and flickery blackness

I'm running Ubuntu 13.04 in Parallels 8. When I get to the login screen, all seems fine, but when I login, I get a black screen. As per suggestions in this thread: I switch to a TTY, remove my .config/dconf/user file and setsid unity. Switching back gets me a visible menu and sidebar, but most of the things I click on don't render properly (which is to say, I get black with occasional rectangular flickers). I know they're working however, because I was able to execute "/usr/lib/nux/unity_support_test -p > unity_test.txt" and got the following: (which I was able to read when switching back to tty)


OpenGL vendor string: Parallels and NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL renderer string: Parallels using NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT OpenGL Engine
OpenGL version string: 2.1 NVIDIA-8.16.74 310.40.00.10f02

Not software rendered: yes
Not blacklisted: yes
GLX fbconfig: yes
GLX texture from pixmap: yes
GL npot or rect textures: yes
GL vertex program: yes
GL fragment program: yes
GL vertex buffer object: yes
GL framebuffer object: yes
GL version is 1.4+: yes

Unity 3D supported: yes


(of course the color codes give me actual green in yeses in the tty.

 

I had the problem after I updated to the latest 13.04 X.ORG updates (Version 2:1.13.3-0ubuntu6.2).

My fix:
1. Roll back to previous working copy of 13.04 VM (backups, backups, backups!)
2. Run Software Update in 13.04 to grab the latest changes
3. Reinstall Parallels Tools (MUST be done before reboot)
4. Reboot

Hope this helps

 

The latest 13.04 X.ORG updates (Version 2:1.13.3-0ubuntu6.2) broke me too.

I rescued my Ubuntu VM by reinstalling Parallels Tools on it after it was in the black screen state. In my case I pressed CTRL-ALT-F1 to get to a full-screen terminal which rendered correctly, then mounted the Parallels Tools ISO and ran the install script. It also looks like one could probably just use the the "Reinstall Parallels Tools" command on the Parallels menu then after waiting several seconds, blindly type in your password and hit enter to get past the "Run as Root" dialog that the installer throws up. The installer is running fine, you just can't see it. Once it finishes it will auto-reboot after a couple of minutes.