System no longer boot kdm

Hi, I have recently installed knoppix (most recent release). It has been running on my machine for about a week without any problems until yesterday. I booted the machine and instead of launching kdm - the graphical login screen, I was left at the console login. The last message on the screen left by the boot process was:

Starting K display manager: kdm already running

I can login at the console but noticed that bash didn't read my .bashrc file. I can get X up and running with "startx" but I have noticed some differences in KDE. All of my settings seem to be in place (such as kde look and feel and config files such as .bashrc seem to be active now) but all of the font sizes in KDE are larger - both on the desktop, in Konquorer and in applications such as Firefox). I have no idea what has happened.

Has anybody ever encountered anything similar? If yes did you manage to solve the problems?

Thanks in advance.

will103