HELP! No X on startup

[ac]

D. R. Evans wrote:
> We just had a long power outage. When the power returned, all my 
> machines came back fine except my Kubuntu main desktop machine. It
> is rebooting, but X isn't starting and I'm being presented with a 
> non-graphical prompt.
> 
> This machine has been running dapper fine for about 18 months, and
> I haven't changed anything to do with X for about 6 months (which
> is when I loaded the then-current nvidia driver). It's always
> worked fine, and I have no idea why it's suddenly decided to go 
> non-graphical.
> 
> I haven't the foggiest idea what to do. Can anyone please help?
> 

Is it a login prompt?
if it is then try:
enter your user name you would normally login as, then hopefully you
will be asked for your user password, enter it and click return

if you are able to login ok (?)
then try entering the command
startx
(return)

this has worked for me on a few occasions and although I mostly am
rather inexperienced, it enabled me to use the familiar GUI to sort
things out.
-- 
ac