Various people at ALUG are trying to help me with my problem, and I thank them for their help in trying to get me back into Kubuntu.

Someone asked if anything unusual has occured in the recent past to maybe cause my current situation.

Only one thing comes to mind, is that when I first enter my password at the beginning of a session the first character depressed on my keyboard is not registered. There is no fault with my keyboard, - I have checked this. When I have tried to test my OS with your suggestions during the past week, I have got to a terminal prompt without any imput from me and at the first occassion of me entering a character the character is not registered, the second character (which is a repeat of the first) is registered.

Do I have a gremlin here?

Is it a cause or a symptom of my problem?

On another thought, can I re-install my OS on top of my existing (non-working) OS to resolve my problem, as I can do with Windows?

elc