On Mon, 2007-12-03 at 16:29 -0500, Carl Denk wrote:
> The boot is GRUB dual boot with XP, a choice there is recovery mode. 
> That gets me to command prompt and a password which is accepted. Then 
> the prompt looks like "root@compaq:~#" and I have been able to create a 
> new user there with password and make an admin. Restarting and from 
> Kubuntu log on screen, selecting that new user and password  results in 
> a blank screen briefly and the Kubuntu logon screen again. Selecting the 
> original user results in the red not of the password not good.

That first result (blank screen) sounds like X trying to start up your
selected window manager, erroring out and dumping back to the login
prompt.

Generally this occurs if:
- disk is full
- /tmp is either full or write protected for that user
- user's home directory either doesn't exist, is full, or is write
protected

My guess if you didn't create a home directory for the user you tried to
log in with?

An essential thing to know about ANY linux distro is any time something
goes wrong there's a very good chance a hint will be found
in /var/log/messages. When you're at the Ubuntu log in screen, press
CTRL-ALT F2. This will bring you to a virtual text terminal. Log in as
root and run: 

tail -f /var/log/messages

Press ALT-F7 to return to the GUI and try to log in with the "blank
screen" user. When it returns to the login prompt press CTRL-ALT F2
again and see what messages were spit out. Chances are you'll see in
there what's wrong.

As an aside: Ubuntu is "different" in how it deals with users with
regards to other distros I've encountered. Case in point, I changed the
root password on my machine here using the passwd command. It changed it
for everything but the update manager?? I then tried changing the
password with the user account GUI, but same result. I haven't spent the
time to figure it out, all I know is whenever I enter a root password I
enter the changed one, except when the update manager asks for it,
bizarre...

TTYL
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