I have a Debian install (from a Knoppix 3.6 hd install) that will sometimes (probably about 30%) act weird upon boot up. Sometimes it will boot, and I get 2 lines that say "Not starting xdm as it is not the default xserver" or something like that, and then one that says "starting kdm, kdm already started" (I am guessing here but that is real close) and the console login prompt appears, and about 1 second (or maybe less) kdm login manager starts, but many times nothing happens and I have to login as root and manually start kdm. Sometimes that doesn't even work and I just reboot. I have tried to get kdm to allow me to login as a remote user (I have puTTY on a windows machine, and I can connect, but I really want Xserver to work remotely) but nothing seems to work, and the fact that it is inconsistent makes no sense to me. Why does kdm work sometimes upon boot and not others? Also, possibly unrelated, the menu for KDE (3.3.0) sometimes seems to lose entries (I have tons of games installed via Synaptic but some of them stop appearing under the Arcade Category even though I can still start them manually, and eventually they may reappear later, perhaps after reboot? Sometimes they appear under the KDE Lost and Found menu, but I've never had anything under the "Lost+Found" areas of my hd yet)
Sorry this is so long and confusing, but I am pretty confused right now. I'm not even sure what files would be helpful for people to see, so let me know and I'll post them.

try removing xdm:
#apt-get remove --purge xdm

Grrrr. I seem to have a problem with apt-get. I had frozen bubble on here and I removed it, but it is trying to upgrade the frozen-bubble-data files and failing, because, I think, the old version isn't on here anymore, so there is nothing to upgrade. I can't remove it (it says data is in a very inconsistent state so you should reinstall it before removing it, but I can't re-install it because it is failing at the upgrade area) so I am in a catch-22 here and I have no idea how to stop it. How do I tell apt-get to not upgrade something it has marked for upgrade? Also, will removing xdm cause me any problems? I mean, I know I am using kdm, but are there any dependencies or anything that would require xdm on my system?

do a search on this site about 'knoppix' and why it is NOT Debian.

I can't find an actual Knoppix forum, which is why I posted here. If you do a search for my name you'll see I haven't posted much, but they are spread over a long time because I got into Linux for while, but wasn't ready to switch, and now I'm back and have completely switched from windows. Any help people can offer is appreciated.