HELP!!! System messed up!

[John Aldrich]

On Mon October 17 2011, Tim wrote:
> Usually, you can CTRL+ALT+F2 (or one of the other F keys), over to a
> text console, on the same computer, to use the command line.  If that
> works, then it saves you a bit of hassle to work through this problem.
> Though, it can happen that the graphics system gets so screwed up you
> will have to SSH in.
> 
> You should probably post the xorg.conf file for some other people to
> look for anything wrong with it.
> 
> The other suggestion of removing and reinstalling X is usually bad
> advice.  If there's a problem with the package, you'll be back at square
> one.  The re-install will fail, just the same.
> 
> Likewise, if the package is fine, but a configuration file isn't.  Most
> configuration files that are not provided directly in the package, such
> as ones created later on, or ones that were modified, will not be
> removed during a package removal.  A re-install will use the same
> configuration file.
> 
> If you think the installation of a package is broken, you can check for
> that using the rpm tools own verification options.
>
yeah...things were b0rked so badly I couldn't CTL+ALT+F2. I did manage to 
SSH in from another box on the LAN and went to runlevel 3, deleted the 
config file and went back to runlevel 5. Switching to the nVidia driver 
helped a LOT. I don't know the noveau driver was updated recently or not, 
but something was definitely hosed. Also, the nVidia driver didn't fix it 
100%. I'm still having issues with the keyboard and mouse not responding 
100% in xfce4. I wish I knew where that config file was kept as I might try 
renaming the config file and doing a repair install and see if that came with 
a new config file. I did find some default settings files for xfce, but I don't 
know if there is a per-user file somewhere that might be more important.