Hello, I need some help troubleshooting a problem loading gnome.
Issue: The desktop (GUI) doesn’t load; it defaults back to the command line. The issue is rather dated, since I just setup this linux PC again recently. Not sure how the problem originally occurred; possibly while installing something. Running startx (i.e. after the boot is done, and logging in to the shell), gnome actually seems to load (the logo appears and my old ‘default’ apps are loading). However, while jEdit shows up in full screen (no windows), nothing else is visible. Closing this app just returns to a black screen with a ‘X’ mouse cursor; no keyboard/mouse actions seem to have an effect (ctrl-alt-f2 also doesn’t return to the shell).
Error messages while booting:
gdm…]: GLib-Critical: g_key_file_get_valiue … =NULL failed >>there are a lot of these during the boot
Failed services in runlevel 5: network, vmware, hddtemp, lm_sensors
Background: I’ve had my openSuse for several years now, currently running 11.3 which I installed on top of a previous version about a year ago in an attempt to fix the problem above. Due to various circumstances, I haven’t used my linux box since 
and am a bit rusty on bash. Especially don’t know how to navigate sax/gnome/x/compiz configs. Note that everything used to work like a charm (gnome, dual-screen, compiz). I remember that it took quite some time to set this up…
Hardware specs: athlon64 cpu, two monitors, nvidia geforce 8600gt
Software specs: grub v0.97, openSuse 11.3, kernel 2.6.34.7, gnome 2.30.0, compiz-gnome 0.8.6, nvidia-settings 190.36
Any guidance on how to debug and fix the problem would be appreciated.
-Henry