mouse preferences auto opening on boot. It shows up automatically on desktop first thing after boot. and LQ.org not saving UName and PWord.
However on pervious mint14MAte install the UN would appear in a dropdown box and after selected would then show password and all I'd have to do is select UN and enter. Fresh install of Mint16Mate on year old AMD Fusion A4-3300 8gb ram 1tb hd and LG sata dvd combo.
Also getting error message when trying to install Mint16XFCE on VBox 3.6 saying one of the storage device is problematic or dvd bad.
DVD works otherwise and drive not noisy or problematic with Mint16 Mate. DVD installed Mint 16 Mate to HD no problems. Mint16XFCE runs in live mode ok. Probly a sensitive LD drive and a scratched DVD or VBox not installed properly?

that's a pretty exhaustive list. each of the points would deserve it's own thread, but each point also needs a lot more information.

but before you go there, to me it seems like something went wrong earlier, maybe when installing mint16? or did you make a dreaded dist-upgrade (not sure if that's even possible on mint)?

Thanx ondoho; I decided to try making changes to mouse settings and unchecked the box that said to show it at start up. That fixed that.
And this time accessing LQorg it asked me if I wanted to save/remember the login information.... Kind of strange it takes 6-10 logins to ask me if I want to save remember UN & PW.
Next boot we'll see if it takes.
That said still stumped on Vbox issue. Will try un/re installing Vbox and see if other parameters cand be changed etc... I went for this in repositories and it did not help. so I downloaded and installed the latest from website using gdeb installer. Still no change. I removed the virtual installation and haven't gotten back to installing another yet.
However was wanting to uninstall installation from web site but it doesn't appear in menus of Synaptic. i'm screwed?
Guess I'll have to trouble shoot hardware get another fresh install cd. not sure how to test dvd and hard drive for problems. A bit confused and tired at the moment so will come back to it later.

had mouse to run on startup and stopped that