If the X server is unable to start, you get a horrid looking error message which offers to show a log file incomprehensible to 99% of the population (see my picture: http://i1.tinypic.com/sfulab.jpg ). Instead perhaps we could show a friendly error message, and offer to try and guess a safe configuration (or perhaps just run dpkg-reconfigure)? Unfortunately commands like dpkg-reconfigure or editing a file named /etc/X11/xorg.conf aren't obvious to non-geeks, especially if the GUI is broken so you can't search for help (and worse still typing help on the command line brings up 'help' for bash rather than the general system!) Regards, and congrats on a fine distro. Andy (hope I posted this to the right list!) one more thing - an error suggesting that 'no screens could be found' seems extremely odd to a non-techie user - I mean that message is itself displayed on the screen, isn't it?! ;) <hr size=1> <a href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/mail/uk/taglines/default/cars/*http://uk.cars.yahoo.com/">Yahoo! Cars</a> NEW - sell your car and browse thousands of new and used cars online <a href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/mail/uk/taglines/default/cars/*http://uk.cars.yahoo.com/">search now</a> <hr size=1>