murdered mysteriously
 

I get " according to/var/run/gdm.pid, gdm was already running 486 ,492, 497, (etc) but seems to have been murdered mysteriously , init id 'X' responding too fast, disabled for five minutes. "

what does this mean?

cheers

You get it every time you boot? You also forgot to mention what disto you are using. Go to a lower runlevel like 2 or 3 and remove this gdm.pid file. When in runlevel 3 you can try to start X with startx. You can also try to use another window manager (like KDE or the robust TWM).

good luck!