For several times now I've had that logging into my workstation dop (Ubuntu 14.04) freezes after logging in. The only thing to make it work would be a complete shutdown and cold boot. Simply rebooting doesn't help.

Logging in with guest doesn't help.

Also noted: there are no more icons on the desktop. This turned out later to be caused by my new monitor setup.

There are posts about it, but these are targeted at NVidia videocards, while I have an Intel IGP.

• Reboot and hold the shift key on the keyboard.
• Select boot in recovery mode...when that option screen appears.
• After Ubuntu loads up do a normal reboot (do not hold shift key) and this time log in with your password.
• Click on system settings. (a new page will open)
• Click on Software and updates. (a new page will open)
• Select Additional drivers.(an automatic scan for drivers that are needed or missing will be done)
• You will see that [X.Org.X Server] is being used and that is not the correct driver. So select one of the Nvidia drivers instead then click apply.
• Reboot one more time and log in with your password and your problem should be no more.

When I follow these steps, (I select safe graphics mode) the system hangs on mounting an external NFS share. I can continue with ctrl+C

I can login normally and have icons on the desktop. It doesn't hang and functions normally. Maybe this problem is a compiz issue?

Under Other Software I note that " Intel Graphics drivers disabled on upgrade to trusty".

Update 25-2-2015: it doesn't seem to have had this problem after upgrade to Utopic. Although I have been clicking first guest and then my username on the login screen because the cursor is not blinking, I will stop doing that from now on and see if it reintroduce the issue.

Update 21-4-2015: have logged in normally ever since 25-2. Sometimes I do get an Intel IGP driver error pop-ups, but nothing seems to be wrong other than that.