I'm googling & searching as I'm typing this....

My Mandrake 10 boot goes (almost) fine - LILO comes up, all the startup configurations are all [OK], but it hangs right before KDE comes up.

I get a mass of green garbled junk at the top of my screen.

Everything has worked fine before I updated some stuff (from MDK control center) a few days ago and just now restarted.

Something to do with xf86?

i know there were assorted xf86 updates. fonts, libs, server, etc. it could be you missed something crucial among them. 2 suggestions.........

can you boot into another DE (like Gnome, Icewm, etc.)? if so, use Mandrake Control Center->updates, check all the boxes for the updates (security, bug fixes, upgrades) & see if there's any more xf86 updates available.

if you can't get to any DE, then at a terminal prompt, login as root, connect to the internet & type urpmi xf86 or urpmi xfree & see what's available that way.

one other thought............. are you running a Nvidia card with the Nvidia drivers installed? if so, any time you upgrade a kernel or xf86 stuff, you must reinstall the Nvidia drivers. if that situation applies, try reinstalling the Nvidia drivers.

otis