"Oh, No! Something has gone wrong." Don't Panic.
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What happened
I will probably never know what actually happened. I can tell you only what I was doing when my computer threw up the "Oh, no. Something has gone wrong. Contact Your System Administrator" screen and scared the bejeebers out of me. So, I was working in two separate windows at one time on a single display for my Linux machine. I do this fairly often, but I've never run into the "Oh, no" issue before. What I did differently this time was that, while in the second Window, I decided to restart my computer for reasons I won't go into. The next thing I know, the computer not only does not restart, I get instead the dread "Oh, no. Something has gone wrong" error. I think that trying to restart my computer while in the second window was the problem. The only other thing that I think might have contributed to it was that I was also using the NormCap app at the same time, and NormCap, as much as I love it, can do or cause some pretty change things to happen.
What I tried Immediately
My initial reaction was to do a Safe Reboot, but I discovered quickly that I could not do that, as the normal "safe restart" routine was not available to me, something I discovered when I tried to reboot and invoke the F key in an attempt to reach Safe Boot. I just kept getting the "Oh, no" error message. So it was time for a deep search on Google.
The search for an Answer
As is almost always the case, my search results consisted mostly of Ubuntu Forum posts on Stack Exchange, as that is Ubuntu's chosen environment for their user forums (unfortunately). Once again, I had to suffer through mostly speculative and useless garbage from help-desk and hero wannabe's. As usually is the case, I wanted to ask some clarifying questions, but as also is usually the case, the forum questions were mostly closed, even though no real fix was ever posted. Eventually, I managed to piece together two short suggestions from two completely unrelated forums, and fix my issue. Once again, the whole Linux Help Forums universe threatened my physical and mental well-being.
How I fixed it
Despite all the garbage questions and suggestions from the various Forums, I figured out I needed to do two things, and two things only:
First, while the screen still displayed the "Oh, no" message, invoke the Control-Alt-F3 key combination. This will take you into a form of your Terminal screen. (It won't look exactly like the screen you get when you invoke the actual Terminal app on a working computer but, trust me, it's the Terminal). So, when you see the Terminal screen, enter your User Name, then hit the enter key. Next, enter your system password. Second, while still in this terminal, enter: sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade && sudo snap refresh , then hit the Enter key. After everything cranks for awhile and you are finally returned to your starting Terminal screen, then Second, reboot your computer. For me, it was then Voila! It works again!
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