Stuck at the login screen

[Bruce Marshall]

On Monday, January 10, 2011, Homer wrote:
> I successfully ran 8.04 on this machine in the past.  10.04 installs
> without a hitch, but I'm stuck at the login screen.  Entering a
> username/password the login process starts, but about 2/3 of the way
> through the screen goes blank, and when it comes back I am again at
> the login in screen.

Something went wrong with the startup of KDE...  I have seen this happen with 
a /home that is out of space, or the permissions are wrong somewhere in the 
system, or any number of reasonable explanations.

I would start looking around for these types of problems.