KDE freezes at startup

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#1

Despite having run Opensuse for several years, I consider myself a “newbie”. I just want to get stuff done and I don’t muck about with low-level settings and the like. So I’m rather puzzled.

I updated to 11.2 (32-bit) last night on my HP 8510p laptop and everything worked except Vmware Server (but I found a fix for that). I’m using KDE.

This evening, I was looking at Desktop Settings to find a different background picture (I do this sort of thing so infrequently I can’t remember how I did it the last time). Just out of curiosity, I decided to change the default “Ozone” appearance to “Plastik”. At that moment the machine froze. Even the mouse wouldn’t move.

I removed the battery (the only way to turn off) and booted from the DVD and repaired the system. At the next start-up (and every one since), KDE freezes (progress bar gets about half way through). I happened to be listening to an AM radio station at the time and the laptop throws a lot of RF at it. It sounded as if something was being attempted repeatedly.

I’ve tried a few repairs and reinstalls of all the KDE and X11 packages, but nothing changes.

I have read some threads here about bad memory or HD sectors. The former would surely be more random, so that latter seems likely. The first repair fixed some inodes and since then has found nothing, so I don’t know about that.

Booting into Failsafe works, but of course that’s rather limiting (1024 x 768, stretched out on a wide screen). I can’t find a log for KDE’s start-up to see what it says so, given my lack of knowledge, am at a complete loss.

Since I have everything backed up, it wouldn’t be a disaster to do a fresh install, but since I’ve customized quite a lot and added extra things, I’d rather not. I’d really appreciate any insights.

Thanks.

#2

This is a pretty strange behaviour - unfortunately I can only offer a workaround: try launching a different DE / WM from your loginmanager (I think fvwm is preinstalled) and call ‘systemsettings’ to change the theme back to Ozone.

#3

Boot to terminal. (press 3 at boot). Log in as yourself

Delete or rename the .kde4 directory in your home directory

mv ~/.kde4 ~/.kd4.old

This will bring you back to the base KDE settings.

then type
reboot

#4

Thanks for the responses.

I can’t boot to terminal. Not sure when exactly during boot one has to press 3. I tried during the Intel Boot Agent startup (it beeped at me repeatedly). I tried on power-up (it didn’t beep, but made no difference). Both times I held the 3 key down during the entire startup and it made no difference.

I’ll try to as you suggest in failsafe and see what happens.

#5

Well, despite doing it in failsafe, it worked!

Still, the puzzling thing is how it happened. I’m loath to touch anything cosmetic now, but I don’t really care.

You folks are brilliant!

Thanks

#6

Hello audioio and welcome to the community!:slight_smile:

I can’t boot to terminal. Not sure when exactly during boot one has to press 3. I tried during the Intel Boot Agent startup (it beeped at me repeatedly). I tried on power-up (it didn’t beep, but made no difference). Both times I held the 3 key down during the entire startup and it made no difference.

When you boot your computer you’ll see the GRUB Bootloader.
It will look something like this:
http://i40.tinypic.com/dvq63p.png
At the bottom you’ll see Boot Options.
Select the one you want to boot and add 3 to the Boot Options.

Good luck!:wink: