Black Screen

Hallo,
I have a maybe silly problem but for months now there is no way for me to solve it. Working with OpenSuse 10.3 and KDE on a Lenovo N200 Notebook that worked good. After some time I tried out to start with another Desktop, may be it was this XFCE.
Don`t remember ecxactelly what i did. There was a menue to set it, never found that again. OK, next time starting the system this happened: Start Screen with the usual options Normal Mode, Fail Safe. Normally i just let it happen and start... After starting the screen becomes black with only the mouse pointer to see. I can move the mouse but there is nothing to see, all black. The system is working, I'm sure. My way to work since then is using the fail safe mode to start system. Then type in my user name, password and finally startx command. But in that case cd-rom and usb-slots are not mounted. Also it's not possible to print. I never found any informations in forums or literature about that problem and a solution. Support from Suse in Germany is absolutely poor. The Wiki is useless. So as last try i looked for forums.
Thank you for help, P.Helbing

My initial thought is did you install a graphics driver?
As it sounds like an updated kernel after a manual install of graphics drivers.

As for the printer bit maybe better starting another thread mentioning what model and make.

If we try and solve the default desktop environment here.

Thanks for your fast answer. Never installed another display driver then provided by Suse. The kernel was updated by the suse updater system. Since then all the boot options are double. One time for the system which is openSUSE 10.3 (i586) and one time for the operating system what is Linux 2.6.22.17-0.1-bigsmp i686. That's my theory, don`t know if that's real.
I just tried out something i`ve read in you HowTo "Black Screen". I started Failsafe as root but then didn`t gave the command "startx" as usual but the command "init 5". And again i get my Black Screen with an working mouse pointer! Before that i checked in Yast2 /etc/sysconfig/displaymanager the entry for DISPLAYMANAGER. It's kdm as it should be. All other entrys are standard. Autologin is my normal username. So "init 5" don't give the same result as "startx"
Thanks, Peter H.

OK well we can rule out a few bits it seems.

Ok as we know it works from init 3, and failsafe I being drawn to the fail safe seetings being passed.

ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off noresume edd=off

try adding one/some of these on the line at the bottom on grub or adding them to /boot/grub/menu.lst for the normal one perhaps we can find out which one it is. I'm thinking it maybe one of these but am unsure why it just started to happening. apm=off acpi=off