My computer crashed recently. The O/S is Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 Lenny. When I re-booted, the text starts scrolling like it normally does, but it only goes as far as the login prompt. The box where you enter your name and password does not show up, and of course the desktop (KDE) that would follow. I wonder what is going on?

Do the boot messages say something like 'Cannot fsck the root partition. Run fsck manually' just before the login prompt?

Thank you for responding stress_junkie. Let's see now, booting up today, things went a little different. The GRUB loaded and the hardware checking started, but it stopped at:
Checking file systems . . . fsck 1.41.3 (12-Oct-2008)
/dev/sda9 has been mounted 36 times without being checked, check forced
/dev/sda9: | = = = =

I goes to about 60% and then blacks out.

Did another re-boot and then Ctrl-C to cancel this. It proceeded then to a list of warnings, the last of which said:

WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist, it will be ignored in a future release.

Debian GNU/Linux squeeze/sid Radio tty 1

A login prompt then appeared.

This is a bug, you can ignore it
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-.conf-714401/