I'm currently running kubunutu Intrepid KDE 4 under VirtualBox. I accidentally turned on desktop effects, which are way to much for a virtual machine to handle. Now, KDE won't load at all.

I have a DSL live-cd I'm going to use for rescue. What I need to know is, how can I turn off the desktop effects (i.e. explode, desktop snow) through cli, or by editing files? Is it possible, or should I just reinstiall?

Thanks!

Desktop effects are a per-setting user. I.e. the settings are stored in the home directory of each user. So you could create a new user on the system and KDE would work fine for them.

To sort out the user KDE doesn't work for, try looking at their kwinrc file. You should find entries like

which you can then change. I'm still using Hardy and the kwinrc file is at ~/.kde4/share/config/kwinrc but I think on Interpid KDE4 settings are in ~/.kde so you'd want ~/.kde/share/config/kwinrc. You can easily figure out which it is anyway.

Reinstalling is only a way to fix the things on the OS from the company whose leader said the phrase that you have on your signature (MS, Gates).

So, dive on ~/.kde. At most, if you can't fix it, you will need to remove the kwin related config files and reconfigure your window manager only.

You don't need a livecd, by the way. Just boot on runlevel 1. If your boot menu doesn't give you that option, if you use grub you can edit the kernel boot line and add a "1" to it, and it will boot on runlevel 1.

I had the same problem with my Linux box (F9), I solved my problem by renaming the
file kwinrc to kwinrc-bad.

This file can be found at:

/root/.kde/share/config (F9)