KDE upgrade results in black screen

[hardeeps]

Hi All

I have debian etch on Intel laptop, dual boot with WinXP.

I asked apt-get to upgrade to the latest K3B version. It told me that 320 MB of downloads are needed, and KDE will also be upgraded along with it. I agreed. Some errors did show during the process, but the script continued till the end so I didnt pay much attention.

On rebooting, KDE stopped working. I get the login screen, which I login. Then it shows that KDE is building the desktop, and then a black screen with only the mouse cursor showing.

I tried everything on this thread: forum/debian-linux-help/92317-fresh-debian-install-kde-loading-blank-screen.html

I have an ATI display card, and downloaded new drivers, build them and then did reconfigure. Now I could see the new drivers, but even on selecting those its the same issue. Maybe I am doing something wrong, but I dont know what it is. The build process went through without a glitch.

I use the GRUB single user mode to do these things, logged in as root. It may have to do something with my monitor: when I do reconfigure, the monitor is not autodetected and says 'Generic monitor'. However, as far as I can remember this was always the case.

Please help. Should I try to reinstall KDE? How do I do that? I dont have a lot of experience with Linux, although I have used it for the past one year.

[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !

Boot up in Command Line Mode, runlevel 3 and execute startx command. Post exact error message here.

[hardeeps]

How do I enter runlevel3?

[devils casper]

Highlight Debian title in GRUB Menu and press e. Select kernel line and press e again. Type 3 at the end of line. Hit Enter key and press b. Debian will boot up in runlevel 3.

Highlight Debian title -- e -- select kernel line -- e -- type 3 - Hit Enter key -- b

[hardeeps]

Tried to follow your settings, but KDE started up already automatically. Hence killed it and then reran it using startx. The console didnt show anything that looked like an error message, so linking the log file here. hopefully this helps, it does have what looks like some error messages

[devils casper]

Open /etc/X11/xorg.conf file with root privileges. Set Driver "vesa" in Video Card section.
In case it doesn't work, post the contents of /etc/X11/xorg.conf file here.

[hardeeps]

Tried editing xorg.conf doesnt work. Attached here. (I reverted back to fglrx after having tried vesa and restarted).

Thanks for your help so far.

[devils casper]

Rename xorg.conf file and try to reconfigure display.

cd /etc/X11
su -
mv xorg.conf xorg.conf.bak
dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

[hardeeps]

Still no luck. What is wrong? Do the logs tell you something?