[DC LoCo] strange boot problem

[Robert Simmons]

I recently did the upgrade from Kubuntu 11.04 to 11.10.  Everything
went great.  Then I installed KDE 4.7.2 from kubuntu updates, and the
new AMD/ATI Catalyst 11.9 drivers for xorg.  Now I have two problems:

1) nepomuk crashes after every login.  How do I disable it completely?
 I know that this problem is fixed in 4.7.3, but I want to disable it
until I can install 4.7.3 next month when it hits kubuntu updates.  I
have already tried unchecking nepomuk and strigi in System Settings >
Desktop Search > Basic Settings.  This does not help with the crash at
login.

2) If I select the normal boot from grub the next thing that happens
is a blue screen (not solid blue, if you look really carefully at the
screen, it is thin vertical stripes of blue and slightly darker blue),
rather than the Kubuntu splash screen.  Trying to ssh into the machine
from elsewhere is unsuccessful, so it is hanging pretty early in the
boot process.  If I select recovery from grub then from the recovery
screen select continue normal boot, everything boots just fine.  This
happened after installing the new catalyst drivers.  Any thoughts
about why this is happening?

Thanks,
Rob