---- PLEASE use small words and maybe draw me pictures!

Yesterday I finally managed to conquer the grey log-on screen and make KDM work... beautiful, great, fine.

Linux ran great all day and I decided to configure my scanner... all continued to be good so I shut down and went to bed.

This morning I booted up and the KDE log-on screen came up without anything saying "Failed" in the right hand column, I tried to sign on and discovered that my mouse wasn't working... tabbed to the password entry, typed it in and hit enter... The screen flickered a couple of times and returned to the KDM log-on. I tried a couple more times and finally Root worked, but not my normal user-name.

Had a pointer... but still no mouse.

I punched keys until I found a shortcut to the run command and started Yast, tabbed around to the mouse configuration and found that everything looked okay. Hit alt-c and poof, the mouse started working. Fine.

Logged out of "Root" and returned to log-on and again had no mouse.

To keep it short: I can only log-on as the root user and the mouse has to be configured every time I log on.

Any bright ideas?

as a start, at the kdm login screen, can you press CTRL + ALT + F2 and it brings you to a console login? if so, do that and login as your normal user there.. if you get errors with your login it should say right there what the problem is.
if you can login from this terminal, then check the log for your X windows. youll have to know which one your using, either xfree86 or x.org. if the latter, then try a command like 'tail -n 25 /var/log/Xorg.0.log' and it should show you the last 25 lines of that file, and you can either post some of it if it looks like it might help or will get an error message! if you get error message its cause i cant remember the exact pathname to this file.. 'cd' to /var/log' and 'ls' the directory and look for the log.. i think thats the name though. if that file doesnt exist or you use x86free, then search around online for where/what the log file is and try the tail command with that.

You may try to login to "kdm" , windowsmaker , instead of "default" or KDE with your broken user


Trying to "fix" it :

You could also login from a Console
( [CTRL]+[ALT]+F2 )

Login there as
root

type in :

init 3

(maybe [CTRL]+[ALT]+F2 to get back to console2 - if it switched you to console1 )

yast

(which should open an easier version of Yast - use the ALT key and beginning letter to switch)
and make a new user (but not deleting your old one)
and check your mouse settings ... (and try to install once)

after done yast :

init 5

if you can login then with that new user - maybe you get another session working as user2
or if needed a root (GUI session)
( [CTRL]+[ALT]+F7 1st GUI user ) ( [CTRL]+[ALT]+F7 GUI 2nd user )
[Instead of login in with two users you could also try to open inside your user2
a session for user1 of Konqueror [execute in the "SuSE"menu] - this you would need for the files you maybe placed on desktop ]

if you can login then with that new user - maybe you get another session working as root
( [CTRL]+[ALT]+F7 1st GUI user ) ( [CTRL]+[ALT]+F7 GUI 2nd user )
Copying the files of your old user in two steps ...
(important files 1st - settings and ".hidden-folders" later if you still can login )

[Remember to make them belonging to user2 - with GUI rightclick on the folder - changing the user ]

[maybe a late question - is your mouse an USB mouse ?]