when i boot into linuxmint 8 (helena) it goes straight to terminal.

[kindstrangersrule]

I was gone for like an hour and when i came back it was doing this. The only way I could get on the internet was by running firefox from terminal but that is all that shows up, and none of my history, bookmarks, etc are on it. As soon as i log in, it goes to terminal in a box in the corner of the screen. What can i do to get my computer back?

[Dapper Dan]

It sounds like gdm (the sign in manager) is going straight to a terminal because somehow that got chosen as the default "Desktop." When you sign out, do you get gdm? If so, choose the "sessions" tab and choose Gnome Desktop instead (assuming that is the desktop you are using but I don't know the default desktop environment for Mint). It will ask if you want it to be your default. Answer yes and it should then boot to your old Gnome Desktop. If after doing this, it still goes to a default terminal type in:

gnome-session

and press enter. Do you get it? If not, there should be some error messages in the terminal you can share with us.

[kindstrangersrule]

thank you so much!! it worked!