Alright, here it is; I just installed SuSe 9.3 Pro and it went off without a hitch, until I restarted. Like I said, it loaded fine setup my DSL connection with no hassle at all, surfed a little, played some games, looked around, downloaded updates from Novell, of which some would not take affect until restarting. So I did.

Well, when I restarted, everything seemed to be going fine until I reached the logon screen which shouldn't be the case since I just went and said do an auto logon in KDE.

Well, I logon and I'm stuck in some kind of terminal window that I have no clue as to what to do. I did at one point just type KDE and it brought up a session in KDE, but it still seemed to be running in 'terminal' like windows and had limited functionality and missing buttons and links. I am able to access and run YaST from here but since I'm a newbie (for about the 20th time- something about Linux always returns me to the darkside (MS)), was unable to locate anything that I would recognize as what to change to get me to boot normally right into KDE.

If anyone has any idea what I'm doing wrong and how to correct this probably minor Linux problem I have as this would save me plenty of time as my next step is to completely reload Linux and if that doesn't work, then go back to Bill Gates land again until next time.

Thanks for any help in advance!

Rod

hmm.. i dont really know what your describing.. but roughly sounds like you cant get to your original KDE desktop with the panel ('taskbar') and icons, etc. press CTRL + ALT + BACKSPACE. this should bring you to a terminal. (if necessary, login, but since you already are i dont think youll have to). try typing 'startx' and press enter.. does that fix it?
if not, im not exactly sure what your describing

edit: if that helps, i think its because your computer is booting to runlevel 3 (terminal), and youll need to change to runlevel 5 (gui), not sure if thats what your describing though.. if it is and you need help with that let us know.
then again, its suse, im pretty sure it starts in level 5.

Thanks anyway for your suggestions, but nothing seemed to work. I finally did a complete re-install and this time when it finished loading and asked me to either continue, start YaST, or restart; I chose restart and it seemed to take, and seems to function.

Then I made the mistake of wasting several more hours trying to load it onto my old 900Mhz, again going without a hitch, but figured what could it hurt if when it was done loading, I just go into YaST and add another user real quick before rebooting. Wrong answer! Duplicated the previously mentioned problem to the tee!


It is booting in Runlevel 5, it seems and says anyway. I get a totally grey screen with a grey login and password block in the middle. It will let me login as root or a user. When I do either, the login block disappears and just a black 'X' for the mouse cursor remains. Nothing else on this grey screen. I can left click and get a menu to appear with several choices, like xthis and xthat, kill, restart, stop session, or xterm. When I choose xterm, I get a terminal window of course and I can type kde which will start that funky kde session. I say funky because like you said earlier, most of the icons are missing from the taskbar and there are no desktop icons. Whenever I do select an icon that is available, or a menu item I get a 'skeletal' box representing the application chosen, attached to the mouse cursor, of which the contents are not revealed until I left click and drop the box. It's just a transparent box with symetrically criss-crossed lines until I click and then it is a fully function representation of whatever app I was selecting.

I can't shutdown from this simulated kde evironment either. My only choices are end session, or end session, which takes me back to the blank grey screen.

I think that about does it for Linux adventures this year! I wasted a good three-day weekend, ignoring family and friends, to try and get something to work that should come out of the box that way. Even Micro$lop works right out of the box! Sure, you have to spend several hours updating and patching, but at least you can get online and do that! I get paid good money to update and patch Bills code, I don't get paid to do that for Linus's open source stuff. I mean I can still remember loading first generation slackware back in 95-96 and having to use FIPS to repartition drives to fit Tovald's baby on drives, and it didn't seem as scary and or frustrating as loading these GUI version of today!
That was back when I had time to waste on stuff like that, now I'm old and senile and need point and click or I get freaked-out easily!!!

Thanks for listening to me rant, or not! I'm reformatting the 900Mhz system right now in NTFS.

Thanks again for your help.

Regards,

Rod

the YOU patch kdebase3-SuSE strikes again......try to reinstall it from the install disk.

No. Start up in init 3, non-graphical mode. Run yast and modify the startup gui from wdm to kdm.

There are better instructions if you search the SuSE forum.

The reason you got this is because you ran the online update at the end of the install. I haven't seen that anybody's determined the exact package that's screwing it up.

Thanks, will probably give it a shot later tonight. Funny thing is about the 900Mhz install, it is not connected to any network or outside line, so I didn't do any updates at all.

Undfortunatly I have to toss my hat in on this one as well. I was looking forward to SuSe 9.3 Pro, but is a dissapointment. I remember when 9.1 came out and many forums were filled with complaints as to 9.1 just not working too many problems. Then 9.2 came out and all seemed better not as many complaints, but now as well as this forum I am seeing more on others complaint about problems with 9.3 Pro. What happened Novell?

I have experienced the same exact effect you have gotten. I did update with yast when asked to. Rebooted and WAM! that same ugly screen. Now i have abit of experience with some different linux distro, but i could see how this would be frustrating for someone that has no idea what to do. Digging around in conf files attempting to navagate around the linux filesystem when none of the names or setup means anything to you just to try to get it working, I know from some friends can drive them away running and screaming back into the arms of the evil empire Microsoft.

I am old enough now and have had enough experience with linux that I agree with you the Da$# thing should work right out of the box by now.

I have attempting to install it a few different times now on a few different machine. Same problem. I even opted not to do the update and as long as I dont it works fine, but this is no help if you need updates or want to install new packages. I found on one of the machines if you dont do updates but change the settings on the graphics setup like actaully tell it what monitor you have. Did not change any of the resolutions setting. It crashed and when reboot just a flashing screen saying out of range.

Guess I will go with linux distribution I know works best.

Simple fix....

1 Start YaST2.
2 Go to "System" then "/etc/sysconfig Editor".
3 Goto "Desktop", "Display manager", "DISPLAYMANAGER" and change the entry to "kdm" (for KDE) or "gdm" (for GNOME).
4 Click "Finish".

sorted