Thanks for the great info!

Last night, I was able to log in, with KDE, just fine... then things started locking up. After confirming that I could log in to each user without the graphical shell, I rebooted to try again... and finally got to the bottom of the problem.

I made my partitions too small! /home is out of space. When I installed Knoppix to the HD, I didn't realize that I'd have to do some extra work to use different partitions for different parts of Linux. Remember, I'm a total newbie... I didn't even know what /home was until I tried it out (and I'm still figuring it out).

I haven't stored any valuable data (except for the Frozen Bubble high scores -- thanks for the info, I'll save that!), so I'll re-install Knoppix with a more sensible partitioning scheme as described in the "hints and tips" forum.

Thanks a ton! Your assistance made a great birthday present for me.