problem with booting

[mrw02536]

Until yesterday my Linux Mint 16 has been running flawlessly except for a minor problem with getting sound out of my 5.1 speakers. I tried something recommended on a forum that looked straightforward enough as follows:
sudo apt-get remove --purge alsa-base
sudo apt-get remove --purge pulseaudio
sudo apt-get install alsa-base
sudo apt-get install pulseaudio
sudo apt-get install gnome-alsamixer
sudo apt-get install indicator-sound
sudo alsa force-reload

Unfortunately after the change when I rebooted all I have is a cursor on a black screen. My best guess is something has corrupted the Mint Display Manager (MDM). I get the startup Linux Mint 16 logo and then the blank screen. I've tried various things in recovery mode for the console like trying the undo the changes above and uninstalling and re-installing MDM but I'm getting nowhere.

I thought of maybe upgrading to Mint 17 but booting to Live CD doesn't give an upgrade option. Curiously I'm finding the booting from the Live CD also is giving me the black screen and the arrow cursor. However, I do have a copy of LInux Mint 13 on a separate partition with boots fine so I'm in no danger of losing anything critical.
Any suggestions???

[roblm]

I followed the steps you listed on my Mint 16 installation on my extra partition and got the same result. Attempting to
reverse the change by removing and installing packages in reverse order in Recovery mode failed to restore the system. I noticed
that one package that was initially removed was not available when trying reinstall it.

I would recommend waiting for the Mint 17 final release. You also might want to post the link to the site that had the information you
used, so other users can be warned.

[exiteverything]

I'm having the same problem after installing Linux Mint 17 from scratch.

Removed pulseaudio completely, since my LynxTwo-C card will only run with OSS and after rebooting for the first time - black screen.

Any suggestions?