Ubuntu 11.10 will only start in restore mode

I have Ubuntu 11.10, with gnome, running on a Dell Inspiron 620.

It was running fine until the power company came around and turned off the power to change a meter. Now, when I try to boot it up, it will only start in restore mode. I tried

Check all file systems

and it reported that it had fixed the hardware clock. I then ran

Repair broken packages

and it ran to completion but it still will not start in graphics mode. Whe I try to start it up in normal mode, the screen just remains black.

When the terminal started up in restore mode, I entered

sudo service lightdm start

That got stuck on

Stopping Userspace bootsplash

I tried to fix this with the following procedure

sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh -a

reboot

I went into recovery mode again and entered

sudo service lightdm start

It failed on:
- Stopping automatic crash report generation
- Starting deferred execution scheduler
- starting save kernel messages

- Starting load fallback graphics devices

This time it did get past "Stopping Userspace bootsplash"

Now it hangs on

Starting CUPS printing spooler/server

Fixed the problem. Got the restore mode terminal and entered

sudo service gdm start

This brought up Gnome which I much prefer to Unity.