10th November 2016, 10:24
No, the reboot after rc.local edit did not help; i still can only boot fully back to desktop via grub kernel recovery option, thence fsck. Otherwise i still get the normal Maui skyblue splashscreen followed by that bad second splash-screen with the momentary text in the 2 bars. This time, in the brief moment the text was visible, i saw a couple of the words (i think]; something maybe including "check", "file", & "system" (i am not confident about any of that]. Here's a pic of that screen:
This morning [many hours ago] Update Manager offered me a few updates, including the new kernel 4.4.0-47. That's what i'm now using, but it also has not helped eliminate this problem.
If my SSD really had developed a fault that was causing this problem, as fanisatt & rocky7x suggested, wouldn't that stop me booting entirely, under all conditions? Instead, whilst i can no longer do a normal boot, so far every fallback boot via the grub kernel recovery option fsck has worked. I'm just trying to understand the logic of what might be going on & how i could troubleshoot & solve it.
This morning [many hours ago] Update Manager offered me a few updates, including the new kernel 4.4.0-47. That's what i'm now using, but it also has not helped eliminate this problem.
If my SSD really had developed a fault that was causing this problem, as fanisatt & rocky7x suggested, wouldn't that stop me booting entirely, under all conditions? Instead, whilst i can no longer do a normal boot, so far every fallback boot via the grub kernel recovery option fsck has worked. I'm just trying to understand the logic of what might be going on & how i could troubleshoot & solve it.