X windows not working right (no windows or graphics display, only backgrounds)
 

I have been using Linux for about two weeks. I installed Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS (v. 4.0 for x86). Every thing has been great until now.

What’s wrong:
Previously Redhat would display a graphical status bar and then take me to the graphical login screen. Now I get no graphical any thing (status bar login screen, no windows of any kind). When the normal login screen would appear all I get is a blue screen. This is the normal background for my login.

How it happened:
I used alt-ctrl-F1 to login to a text mode and learn vi. For some reason after closing vi I hit alt-ctrl-del instead of alt-ctrl-F7 to go back to my graphical session (alt-ctrl-del is some thing I am very used to from windows). This of course halted the system. When I rebooted, no graphics.

What I have tried:
First I used “man X” to try and start the X server with the commands listed there. But it told me it was still running. Then I looked in the log file (X***.0.log I for get the name, it’s the one that is listed in the X manual). I did not see any errors. I tried renaming the Xorg.conf file to some thing else. I knew this would cause X to try and reconfigure. On the next boot the low resolution configuration screens came up. They companied about the mouse first. It would not accept the configuration for any of the mice on the list (not even none). I put the xorg.conf back and rebooted. At the blue screen (where my log in screen should be) I typed my non-root username hit enter then entered my password and hit enter again. My background from gnome came up, but nothing more. I left the computer running for a while and now the screen saver came up. If I hit a key the screen saver stops, but no password window. If I type my password and hit enter it goes back to my desktop. From this computer I can see my screen name online that gaim uses.

What can I do to reset, reinstall, or reconfigure X windows to get it to work again?

I suggest reconfiguring the X windows. Try to select a lower resolution, and older graphic card driver. Try your best to make it work. After it work, you can check again the causes of the problem and fix it. I think you have some how ordered you monitor to display only a part of the screen rather than the whole screen

Thankyou:

That was exactly my problem. I had been playing with the X windows settings early that day trying to get spanning on my dual monitors. I was playing with the "MonitorLayout" parameters, and forgot about it by time i rebooted. I thought logging out and logging in would restart X. I guess that only works for changing resolution, not for changing monitor layouts.

once again thats thanks a lot.