Many thanks to Dan, Malcolm, and Phil for your advice, but I'm still stuck in Gnome and feeling slightly foolish! (It is Gnome without a file manager too, for some reason, which is a pain) I have followed your advice, (looking at files in /etc/K11, and /etc/sysconfig ) but I think in each case I have only altered the system defaults which new users would get on first logging on. This isn't quite the problem I've got. The box is a server, so it doesn't actually have anybody else who can get to a desktop on it except me, as a couple of different usernames. It is user root which has somehow lost its KDE desktop. The KDE data still exists (I can start KFM manually for example, and it takes me to the last saved filer window). I just can't get it to go back to autostarting KDE from the 'startx' command. My other users are still OK; it is not a system-wide problem. I'm sure it is dead easy to fix, if only I knew where to look! On Tue, 08 May, Dan Kolb wrote:

On Tuesday 08 May 2001 2:01 pm, Mr G M Locock wrote:

...

I'm sure this is a stoopid one...

In RedHat 6.2 I change to Gnome using the desktop switcher tool... don't like it, but the switcher won't return me to KDE.

ISTR there is a file I must delete, but which one please??

Have a look in /etc/X11, and see if there's a file or directory called xinitrc there. You'd have to modify that. Under Slackware, with XFree86 4.0.3, it's in the directory /etc/X11/xinitrc/, and xinitrc is linked to xinitrc.kde (for me).

...

(It is the root user, if that helps)

You do know you shouldn't be running as root unless you absolutely have

to,

don't you?

Yes... but being a server, most of the tasks require the root user to do them. Gary -- G M Locock, Network Manager Bablake Junior School, Coundon Road, Coventry, UK, CV1 4AU Tel: (+44) 24 7663 4052; Fax: (+44) 24 7663 3290 Web: http://www.bablakejs.co.uk Email: gml@bablakejs.co.uk