On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 10:01, Mike Miller <mbmiller+l at gmail.com> wrote: > Thanks for trying, but that did not go well! There definitely is something > quite abnormal here, so your idea might usually work, but not this time. > Stopping gdm went OK, but when I entered the start command, the screen went > black, and that was it -- I could find no way to get anything back. 8< > > Rebooting did not solve my problem. When Gnome comes up to the login screen > there is something very pathological going on. The login box in the middle > of the screen is flashing on and off very rapidly (3-4 times per second). 8< > > At least now I don't have to worry about losing any work so I'll just reboot > repeatedly, changing various things, and I'll see what happens. Any > suggestions? This sounds like an X driver issue. Reboot the machine in "recovery mode" and then, as root: # dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg You might also want to make sure you're system is fully up-to-date before doing this. I haven't seen any major updates come out in the past couple of days, but you might have a new X driver or something. -- Brian D. Ropers-Huilman 612.234.7778