Hi all,

I've managed to completely kill my system, and in the great
tradition of thee things I don't really know why...

I updated X in Debian/Woody, and by only using half my ass
got things somewhat confused, and X wouldn't start (with
many odd messages).  After a while I stumbled upon the fact
that I was still running v3. of X, rather than the 4 I had
thought (can you tell I'm a newbie?)  I found the
dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86 command (or something like
that), which seemed to go well.  The only problem at the end
was that it wouldn't recognize my mouse (/dev/ttyS3)  I
checked and it didn't have write enabled for group, so I
made a lucky guess at the correct CHMOD syntax and fixed?
that.  It was also complaining about not having a
/dev/input/mice, so I created that as a link to /dev/ttyS3. 
Don't know if it's relevant, but ls -l ttyS* said that all
four ports were dialout?

So I logged in (still su to root) and got X, KDE etc., but a
big fuzzy block where my mouse pointer should be.  So I
exited out of root, and startx as myself.  My monitor clicks
as it changes resolution, then a black screen.  And that's
it.  No ctrl-alt-del, ctrl-alt-bksp, or (ctrl)-alt-F(1-7)
has any effect, and I have to hard reboot.  But as I use KDM
this takes me straight back to the same place.

I tried rescue from the debian setup disk, but this takes me
to the same place (not what I was expecting).  So, any
suggestions on how to get in to fix it, and what should I
fix?!

Thanks, Paul