Nvidia driver update problem

[Arthur Dent]

Hello all,

On Tuesday night I allowed yum to update (amongst other things) the kernel
and the nvidia driver on my Fedora14 desktop.

Aug 23 20:02:14 Updated: nvidia-xconfig-1.0-9.fc14.i686
Aug 23 20:02:26 Updated: nvidia-settings-1.0-11.fc14.i686
Aug 23 20:02:34 Updated: 1:xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs-280.13-1.fc14.i686
Aug 23 20:02:35 Updated: 1:kmod-nvidia-280.13-2.fc14.i686
Aug 23 20:02:37 Updated: 1:xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-280.13-1.fc14.i686
Aug 23 20:02:40 Installed:
1:kmod-nvidia-2.6.35.14-95.fc14.i686-280.13-2.fc14.i686
Aug 23 20:02:42 Updated: 1:akmod-nvidia-280.13-2.fc14.i686
Aug 23 20:04:43 Erased: kmod-nvidia-2.6.35.13-91.fc14.i686
Aug 23 20:02:25 Installed: kernel-2.6.35.14-95.fc14.i686
Aug 23 20:02:57 Updated: kernel-headers-2.6.35.14-95.fc14.i686
Aug 23 20:04:05 Installed: kernel-devel-2.6.35.14-95.fc14.i686

Despite having done this countless times before, I had a funny feeling
that something was about to go wrong. Sure enough, after a reboot, I found
that I could not log in to my gnome desktop.

When I try, it starts to build the gnome desktop, gets as far as loading
the background, sometimes some of the icons, and then freezes. I have a
mouse pointer, but nothing to click on. There is no option but to
CTRL-ALT-F2 to a terminal, log in as root and reboot the machine.

I can however log in as a different user. This works absolutely fine.

The only difference between my account and the other user's account is
that I have desktop effects enabled on mine. (Just the "workspace on a
cube" option - the "wobbly windows" make me feel seasick).

Naturally I have root access (either from a terminal, or from an xterm in
another user's account).

My questions:

1) Is it possible to disable the wobbly windows desktop effect from the
command line? If so, how?

2) Does anybody else have this problem?

3) Is there a fix?

4) Should I report a bug? If so, against what, and to whom?

Please help me to get back into my desktop!

Thanks

Mark