[Solved] Big problem: messed up gnome and xfce

[Imagus]

Following a tip in this forum, I recently installed xfce4 in LMDE (using Synaptic) so I would be able to choose between xfce and gnome in the login window. This worked perfectly, until I decided to change the screen resolution in xfce and accidentally picked one that is too high for my monitor. Now everytime I open an xfce session, the screen goes black after the login screen and my monitor displays an error about the resolution being too high. I can however still login by pressing CTRL-ALT-F1, but there is no way I can get into the graphical environment. I have looked around on the internet for a solution, but haven't found one. I tried the xrandr command, but that only gives me a "cannot open display" error. I also tried re-installing the nvidia drivers using sgfxi, thinking that would solve it. The installation was succesful, but unfortunately it didn't fix the black screen.

So I switched back to gnome and forgot about xfce for a while, until yesterday I managed to break something in gnome that gives me the exact same problem as in xfce. This time however I didn't even change the resolution, but the problem appeared after uninstalling and reinstalling Evolution Mail. At least I think that's what caused it, I'm not sure. Perhaps I accidentally uninstalled an important component for gnome when I was uninstalling Evolution, I don't remember exactly.

Anyway, I now don't have any graphical environment anymore in LMDE. Not xfce, and not gnome. Is there any way to fix this or will I have to restore my whole partition?

Thank you.

[lmintnewb]

Just a thought from a linux newb, so I'm probably wrong.

But maybe download summin like fluxbox and try to set it to default desktop. Then uninstall gnome and xfce desktops from there. Download all the packages for them and reinstall them fresh ? Good luck, about the best I could think to offer.

Might take a lil reading about using the CLI ( command line interface ) to get it done. But should also work in resolving your desktop problems ... I hope anyway. That's a bizarre bug with xfce ... Mind if I ask what version you're using of it ? I've got xfce 2.6 summin, so not wanting to accidently make that same mistake.

I'm also sure you could skip the fluxbox deal and just repair it from the CLI too. Sounds like a blessing in disguise ( yeah right ), but learning the CLI and terminal will make you feel like an uber Leet hacker and make you a more savvy Linux user regardless.

Random nonsense: Option to boot into safemode or no ? Might make a difference here too.

[xircon]

http://wiki.debian.org/Xorg

Try reconfiguring your xserver.

[Imagus]

Well, everything is ok again. I worked my way through some of the commands on the Debian/Xorg page and even replaced my xorg.conf file with a backup. This worked, because suddenly I got a (very basic!) desktop instead of just a black screen. So I re-installed my Nvidia drivers (again...) and then everything was back to normal. Gnome seemed to be completely gone though, but it came back as good as new after re-installing the gnome-core component.

Also tried out fluxbox while I was at it, so now I can choose between 3 different desktop environments when logging in.

@lmintnewb: I tried booting into safemode, but that didn't help. And you're right, one can learn a lot from problems like these. I had no idea what a xorg.conf file was before I messed things up.

Thank you both for your help and suggestions.