Hi group,<br><br>In my struggle to break free of Windows, I'm giving SUSE a second try this week, having tried 9.0 a while back.&nbsp; The first time I installed 10.1, I selected Gnome as my interface.&nbsp; I realized I needed to install the NVIDIA drivers for my GeForce card, which I was able to do from within Gnome using YAST.&nbsp; All my desktop fonts became clear and I was able to run 3D apps perfectly.&nbsp; 
<br><br>However, a system restart or two after that the fonts became smudged and pixelated, and 3D acceleration quit working.&nbsp; Worse than that, the system performance began getting slower and slower, taking longer to boot up, and taking forever to respond to commands.&nbsp; I tried everything I could think of - primarily uninstalling and reinstalling the NVIDIA drivers repeatedly - until finally I could do nothing but reinstall SUSE.&nbsp; 
<br><br>Another strange thing that happened at the same time was the system started booting straight into Gnome without requiring me to log in like it had before.&nbsp; I can't think of any change I made that would have caused that but I had the feeling the problems were related.&nbsp; 
<br><br>Now I've reinstalled SUSE (using KDE this time) and once again everything looks and works great.&nbsp; I have not yet installed the NVIDIA drivers or done anything past the initial installation.&nbsp; I'm afraid the problems are all going to happen again, and it's pretty much exactly what caused me to stop using SUSE 
9.0.&nbsp; <br><br>My questions are: <br><br>- what could be causing this?&nbsp; Why would the NVIDIA drivers work one moment and not the next?&nbsp;  Since I used YAST to install instead of doing it manually via the terminal, it seems I shouldn't need to reinstall the NVIDIA drivers every time I update the kernel, which otherwise would have sounded like a possible cause.&nbsp; 
<br><br>- Is there a way to set a system restore point - like in Windows XP - to go back to if things go bad?&nbsp;&nbsp; I feel certain I will have a variety of similar problems while I continue trying to learn Linux, and reinstalling SUSE every time is not an option.&nbsp; 
<br><br>Thank you all for reading this - if I can clarify anything to make my problem more soluble please let me know and I'll do the best I can.&nbsp; <br><br>Regards,<br>Alan<br><br><br>