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Your Name wrote:
in, then running startx. He mentioned that run level 5 works fine.
Actually, he gets the login screen, but can't log in as the usual user.
Right! I have also tried gnome and it pops right back to the login screen too.
In that case, you've most likely got one of three problems, two of which have already been mentioned. 1) You need to correct file permissions in your home directory 2) You have a corrupt .Xauthority file in your home directory, which needs to be renamed or simply deleted (can't see much point in keeping it around, myself, if it's corrupted). 3) You have some screwed up links and/or permissions and/or sockets in your /tmp directory. Typical places to look are /tmp/kde-<username>, /tmp/mcop-<username>, presence of a .Xn-lock file when no user is logged in, old <hostname>-nnnn-xxxxxx sockets (btw, sockets are distinguished by having a file type 's' when you do a ls -l ) First deal with #2 and if that doesn't resolve it, we'll look elsewhere.