Re: How can I refresh Etch completely?



On Tue, 2007-05-08 at 18:54 -0500, Dennis G. Wicks wrote:
Greetings;

I think I have something basically wrong with my system.

Programs that nobody else has problems with fail with
a floating point exception.

[snip]
Any way, any ideas short of the old Windows stand by,
"Format the hard drive and reinstall"?

Well, if I were you. The first thing I would do is create a *COMPLETELY*
new user, using the console,(CTRL-ALT-F1) or do a "telinit 1" and then
add the user.

Reboot, login as that user in GDM and see what happens.

*IF* that works then you know you only need to kill ALL of your $HOMEDIR
settings in regard to gnome and gconf.

The list following of directories (and files) is by no means complete,
but here the list I usually go by:

.gnome
.gnome_private
.gnome2
.gnome2_private
.gconf
.gconfd
.dbus
.fontconfig
.gftp
.gimp*
.gstreamer
.gxine
.gtk*
.metacity
.nautilus
.themes
.xine
.xmms
.Trash

I find, that upgrading GNOME is no the smartest thing in life to do. But
I can't complain.

But If you don't have any luck with the new user method, there are ways
to "re-install" everything.

It a labor of love, but doable. Write us back if you have luck or not
with the new user.

Hopefully, that'll be the end of it.
--
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