[ale] SuSE 7.2 login screen incomplete, unable login

[Richard Holt]

Hello,

I've installed SuSE 7.2 Personal Edition with 4.5GB win & 1.8GB lin,
dual booting with win98se on Dell Latitude D300XT (PII-300, 128MB).
Windows boots OK and Suse used to boot OK.

On one occasion, suse hung or I hung it, (neither Ctrl-Alt-Bksp nor
Ctrl-Alt-Del), and I had to cycle the power.
Suse went through it's check but upon reaching the graphical login screen,
the login dialog was incompletely drawn and does not respond.
Current status: Lilo boots to KDE login but unresponsive and incomplete.

This is the third time this has happened. Before I reinstalled but now
my CD drive is bad, awaiting replacement.

How do I get into a console before X and KDE load?
Then what might help?

thanks,
Richard.

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