Ubuntu - Oh no! Something Has Gone Wrong

It's the first time I've encountered this problem.

Last week I encountered an issue in which my machine had an issue updating correctly, which led to the "Oh no! Something Has Gone Wrong" error.

After some Googling, the common answer was to press CTRL + ALT + F3. Which would trigger a terminal and allow me to start running commands. Unfortunately, this did not work even after trying a flurry of different shortcuts, nothing seemed to yield the terminal.

The laptop in question is running a GRUB boot loader with Windows & Ubuntu 21.10 on the classic dual boot set-up.

My solution/ fix is outlined below

Step 1 - Download Rufus and install a live copy of Ubuntu

Change the boot order in your BIOS to boot from the newly created USB live image.

Step 2 - Installing Boot-Repair

As soon as the live image loaded I installed Boot-Repair. Using the commands below:

# Install Boot-Repair
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair && sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y boot-repair && boot-repair

After Boot-Repair was installed I used the "Recommended repair".

Upon restarting the machine I was finally able to see the GRUB loader. This allowed me to boot into recovery mode and this moves us on to the next step.

Step 3 - Recovery Mode

Go ahead and enable networking and then select the root option.

Upon selecting root you now have access to the terminal and this is where the really fix begins.

dpkg --configure -a
# Try to update
apt update

# if update failed run this
apt --fix-broken install 

# re-run apt update
apt update

Running the above commands and restarting the machine allowed me to get to the login page and successfully enter the system.

I hope this article helps anyone having difficulties with this error.

Remember, keep calm and carry on!

@jamese986