Ubuntu 9.10 repeated dialogue: "Ubuntu is running in low-graphics mode"

[Paul Richards]

Hi,
Every time I boot up my machine I get an error dialogue:

"Ubuntu is running in low-graphics mode

The following error was encountered.  You may need to update your
configuration to solve this.

(EE) Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000: failed to initialise for
relative axes."


I then click "OK" and I'm presented with a list of options.  The default is:

"Run Ubuntu in low-graphics for just one session"

I then click "OK" and another dialogue appears saying "Stand by one
minute while the display restarts", to which I click "OK" again.


If I take my time clicking "OK" the above three times then the display
turns black after the last click and the system seems totally
unresponsive.  CTRL-ALT-F1, etc do nothing, but a CTRL-ALT-DEL is
enough to cleanly reboot the machine.

If however I click the "OK" buttons straight away without hesitation,
then after a short moment of black screen the normal KDM login window
appears.  My login works perfectly and there is no evidence of any
such "low-graphics mode".  My display is running at the full 1280x1024
resolution I expect, 3D works (according to glxinfo) and all my input
devices work fine.

(This different behaviour between clicking "OK" quickly or slowly
appears to be repeatable.)


This is an Ubuntu 9.10 system (amd64) which has been switched to
kubuntu by installing the "kubuntu-desktop" desktop package.  I keep
up to date by regularly running "aptitude update && aptitude
dist-upgrade".  The system did not always have the above problem and
this has only started in the last week.  I have not changed any
hardware so perhaps this has been caused by a recent package update or
some periodic system maintenance task.  (Can the clever *readahead
packages cause X to start before all the devices are ready?)

The hardware is a 4 year old PC with an Athlon 64 CPU, 2GB RAM, and an
NVidia graphics card.


Thanks in advance,


-- 
Paul Richards