I can no longer log on to my linux computer. I turn it on, it boots up fine (or at least it doesnt said [FAILED] beside anything), takes me to the login screen, lets me enter a username and password, starts to load the gui, and then takes me back to the login screen. Why is it doing that?

Someone please help!

Have you tried a "failsafe" login attempt? It might get you in far enough to at least see what's going wrong.

Have you changed your video drivers? Installed something like Beryl/Compiz?

thanks for replying... i posted on the ubuntuforums.org site and never got a response... but LQ seems to be much better about getting help

I did try a failsafe-gnome login, and it got further through the login process, flashed something about power managment up in a window, turned the screen black, and went back to the login screen. So then i tried failsafe-terminal and got logged in via the terminal. then i ran sudo gnome-session and gnome started running(kind of). But when i ran it put this in the terminal window:

gdk_pixbuf_scale_simple: assertion 'dest_width >o' failed
libnotify-Message: Unable to get session bus: Unable to determine the address of the message bus

and there was also a pop-up that said this:

Power Manager
This program cannot start until you start the dbus session service. This is usually started automatically in X or gnome startup when you start a new session.

I did update my video drivers a while back and a few weeks ago i installed XGL and Beryl as a new type of Session that i could choose to run at the login screen. But that was a few weeks ago, and since then i have restarted my computer and done all sorts of stuff and it has worked fine. then yesterday we had a power outage and i guess the machine didnt shutdown properly or something, but still it boots with no problems. only now, i cant get past the login screen unless I do the above. in any case, it still doesnt really load my profile, and i would really like to have my computer running "normally"...

also i dont know what a dbus is or a dbus session. actually, i dont understand what any of that error message information says...

Dbus is a message passing algorithm for applications. You'll have to investigate a bit about getting Dbus working again.
How about reconfiguring the service? Try sudo dpkg-reconfigure dbus

I tryed the the command you suggested (sudo dpkg-reconfigure dbus) but alas, it doesnt seem to have helped. Is it Dbus that is causing me all this grief?

Looks like it, since all errors point to it =/

Thanks, well i guess i will continue to look around and see if there is anything about "fixing" dbus that anyone has posted. I've looked some but havent seen anything yet. Does anyone know anything about "fixing" this dbus thing?