I recently built a Debian 7.7 system and tried to make some adjustments so Nvidia video wouldn't pause so much. I guessed I needed to install VDPAU something-or-other. It added in NVIDIA-alternative. It said there was a conflict but all I needed to do was reboot. So I did.
X11 never came up. It can't somehow. I tried removing the drivers I installed but no joy. I'm guessing I must now rebuild the entire X11 display structure from rescue mode.
What is the easiest way to rebuild X11? I'm comfortable with rescue mode. (please don't say reinstall 7.7)

How did you install the NVIDIA drivers?
https://wiki.debian.org/DontBreakDeb...nstall_scripts

EDIT: I can categorically say you will not have to re-install Debian 7.7... We're on 7.8 now :P

I used Synaptic Package Manager. I tried to fix from rescue with apt-get remove and install.

I don't know what you mean by this -- can you elaborate please.

When you boot up, can you switch to the console?
(<Ctrl>+<Alt>+F2)

No need to switch. I *AM* in the console in rescue mode. I can't *GET* to X11 (from which I assume you want me to switch.) btw: I'm typing this to you while using a different system...that works fine.
Synaptic Package Manager is an X application that's runnable only if X11 is running. Whereas apt-get is a console-only text application. I seem to remember that's what the SPM does. Its a gui front-end to the apt-get system.
As to the quote about which you want me to elaborate...it was the SPM that told me I had a conflict (while it was doing the VDPAU install). Then I rebooted.
Then X11 would not come up...black screen with blinking cursor.
So I rebooted again and selected rescue from the GRUB systems menu. From there I used dpkg to grep for all the newly installed drivers. That's when I discovered the NVIDIA-alternative drivers running. The SPM had apparently decided those were necessary, along with some other GLX stuff.
So I used "apt-get remove" to uninstall each of those. I then tried to reboot again.
I got to the X11 xinit and got only black screen blinking cursor again.
Is this enough elaboration?

No.

What is "SPM"?

http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

SPM = Synaptic Package Manager. Sorry, I didn't want to keep typing it.

What was the nature of these adjustments?

I never use synaptic -- APT gives much more information when you use it from the command line with `apt-get` or `aptitude`

You could try solving this with the ncurses interface for `aptitude`
http://www.algebraicthunk.net/~dburr...h02s02s04.html