[LUNI] [HELP] X Problem Since Update

[Robert Smith]

I have a Compaq Evo N600c laptop loaded with PCLinuxOS 2007 (based off of Mandrake). Last night I checked for updates for my system. While at it, I noticed in the Not Installed area of Synaptic that there were drivers for my ATI Radeon graphics card ( http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/10886_div/10886_div.HTML ), so I had Synaptic mark them for install. It gave me all the dependencies and everything appeared to be fine. The packages all downloaded and installed normally, and when complete, I got a message that to complete the install of one library package, X would have to be restarted. I closed down any open apps and clicked OK.

This is where things began to go downhill. X did not automatically start back up. I got to a command prompt and issued the command "startx" but it failed. I tried again as root and it too failed. I halted and then cold booted the system. Same result.

Please tell me that I haven't lost my KDE desktop forever, and if anyone has an idea on how to fix this, I would sure appreciate the assistance.

When I try to start X, I get an error message that displays on the screen,
Fatal server error:
no screens found
XIO: fatal IO error 104 (Connection reset by peer) on X server ":0.0"
       after 0 requests (0 known processed) with 0 events remaining.

Above where this error message is displayed, it says that the system is using the config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf". It also mentions using vt7, which I assume to mean Virtual Terminal #7, the GUI.

As I said, any help would be appreciated. I'm fairly versed in Windows recovery, but am new to Linux, having dabbled in it off and on. I have no experience at using vi, but just as a sheer chance of luck, one of the applications I installed tonight was Emacs, and although not well versed, I can somewhat move around in it if I have to alter a config file.
   
  Rob Smith