Well, I figured that one out. Some program adds /usr/openwin/bin to my path without adding a ":", thus trashing the previous path which happens to be the KDE binary path. Therefore startkde could not find the KDE programs and the window manager. In the failsafe session the path is OK. Sorry to bother everyone. Dirk _______________________________________________ Dirk Muders Staff Astronomer Submillimeter Telescope Observatory Steward Observatory University of Arizona 933 N. Cherry Ave. Tucson, AZ 85721 U.S.A. WWW : http://steffens.as.arizona.edu/~dmuders Email : dmuders@as.arizona.edu Fax : +1-520-621-5554 Phone : +1-520-621-1515 -- Send posts to: kde@lists.netcentral.net Send all commands to: kde-request@lists.netcentral.net Put your command in the SUBJECT of the message: "subscribe", "unsubscribe", "set digest on", or "set digest off" PLEASE READ THE ARCHIVED MESSAGES AT http://lists.kde.org/ BEFORE POSTING ********************************************************************** This list is from your pals at NetCentral